Reviews

This book is exceptionally beautiful. Kawabata has an incredibly light touch, barely describing the feelings of the characters or their actions. Instead, we follow the character's gaze to some flowers, or mountains, or the rain, and in doing so understand how they feel.

My favorite thing about this book is something I've never seen in English literature. In English, a double break between paragraphs usually signifies a change of "scene" or other dramatic inflection. Kawabata puts these pauses right in the middle of conversations or descriptions. It usually serves to emphasize the image in the sentence immediately preceding, and leave some space for it to have emotional impact.

daladala's review against another edition

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5.0

Romaani kuin runo. Minkä keho ja kieli peittää, silmien loiste paljastaa.

violentvixen's review

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4.0

This is so vivid yet so subtle. There were moments where I started to feel like I was reading a guidebook of Kyoto, but then something would shift to be so utterly poetic. It's fascinating to read what Kyoto was like in the 50s as I'm much more familiar with it in the modern era and also to see how much has been preserved.

I wish my Japanese was good enough to read it in the original language, I am absolutely sure I'm missing beauty in a lot of these sentences. Still a wonderful read though.