1st Edition

Soundings in Time The Fictive Art of Yasunari Kawabata

By Roy Starrs Copyright 1998

    This first full length, and long overdue, study of Kawabata, Japans first Nobel laureate for literature and the most widely known for his novels Snow Country (1960) and Sound of the Mountain (1970).

    Introduction, 1 An Orphan Psychology, 2 An Ambiguous Redemption, 3 Experiment and Expansion, 4 Between Tradition and Modernity, 5 Elegies for A Dying Tradition, 6 Time and Anti-time, 7 Narcissus in Winter

    Biography

    Roy Starrs holds a PhD in Asian Studies from the University of British Columbia (Vancouver) and has taught there as well as at Union College (New York) and Aarhus University (Denmark). He is currently Head of Japanese and Asian Studies at the University of Otago (New Zealand). As a researcher he has spent many years in Japan, including time as a Japan Foundation fellow in 1994/5 and 2000/1. His books include Deadly Dialectics: Sex, Violence and Nihilism in the World of Yukio Mishima; An Artless Art: The Zen Aesthetic of Shiga Naoya; Soundings in Time: The Fictive Art of Yasunari Kawabata. He has also edited a number of books including Asian Nationalism in an Age of Globalization.

    'It is a very important and valuable contribution and should be welcomed particularly by the Kawabata readers who wish to gain a better understanding of his works' - Sakuko Matsui, University of Sydney, Journal of Japanese Studies, 2002