A review by wolfdan9
The Rainbow: A Novel by Yasunari Kawabata

4.0

"The beauty of a single flower is enough to reawaken one’s will to live."

Hot off the heels of "The Lake" I decided to purchase this newly translated novel by Kawabata and read it in a fairly short time. "The Rainbow" is much more akin to Kawabata's other works in terms of style and substance. The prose is incredibly delicate and fairly minimalistic. Kawabata is the actualization of what I believe Soseki sought to achieve with his prose. The depth of Kawabata's writing is not merely in its layers, but in its "interwovenness." A spare bit of dialogue or an ordinary scene can become quite powerful with the assumed context. For example, the very first scene contains a young woman meeting a young father on a train, who is taking care of his daughter alone. The woman's admiration is a hint that she may have some issues with her father/family, which later becomes clear. As Kawabata fleshes out the characters, normally through their dialogue with one another or their stray thoughts or observations, the pieces connect and a fuller picture of who these characters are, and how their relationships speak to some powerful theme, becomes clear.

"The Rainbow" is rich with nature metaphors, so many that I would not attempt to extract them all, but there is a constant reminder of the beauty around us. Kawabata ensures that he frequently juxtaposes the rife and drama-filled relationships of his characters with the ever-present beauty of flowers, mountains, or a river. Kawabata seems to be suggesting that at all times, this answer to our human problems exists and just needs to be seen. Nonetheless, Kawabata does tackle some heavy themes with a delicate hand. Central to the novel is the relationship among 3 estranged half-sisters, 2 of whom are emotionally damaged by their respective relationships with their father and by their respectively deceased mothers. There is some vague tangential mirroring of Mizuhara's 3 daughters and the post-war generation of changed Japanese people. You have Momoko, who is problematic and promiscuous, Asako, who is dutiful and traditional, and the 3rd daughter (can't remember her name!), who is completely estranged. I have not fully parsed out the meaning of this, but the sense of a deeper narrative is palpable while reading. The relationship among the family members itself is also quite captivating and raises questions about how one's current actions/choices are impacted to such an extent by one's past that they no longer matter.

 Death is common in the novel and there are plenty of suicides as, quite honestly, you may expect from a Japanese novel. Kawabata ties together the post-war changes to Japan (illustrated not just through its people and ideas, but its changing infrastructure/architecture -- all of which are lightly commented on but impossible to miss) to the trauma that each person carries with them throughout the novel. This is most obvious with Keita, a young man who is killed in the war, and Momoko (Mizuhara's most emotionally damaged daughter) his girlfriend. Keita's death acts as a domino effect that leads to Momoko manipulating other young men, one of whom eventually commits suicide because of her. Kawabata gracefully illustrates their relationship in a single chapter, which ends with Keita crafting a bowl using a mold of Momoko's breast. This is the only item remaining of his upon his death, and years later when Momoko curiously inserts her breast once again into the bowl, it no longer fits.

I'm struggling to really capture the heart of this novel, and of Kawabata's greatness, but I'll lastly mention that the individual stories of each character is so powerfully written in so few words that I can't help but think Kawabata is a genius. "The Rainbow" is the sort of novel where you can somehow peer into the minds and hearts of each character and where everything that happens feels interconnected and purposeful, even if you're not fully sure why (or even how this effect is being created).