Thousand Cranes

Rating:
Summary: Thousand Stars
Review: Although an appreciation for traditional Japanese culture and a knowledge of the ancient ritual of the tea ceremony are helpful. this book is enjoyable regardless of either. The protagonist, Kikuji Mitani, is caught in an intergenerational and gender war between two of his deceased father's mistresses. The jealous Chikako dutifully tries to arrange a marriage for the young Mr. Mitani after his natural mother's death. However, her rival, Mrs. Ota intervenes, bringing great shame to herself and her daughter, Fumiko, in whom all of her mother's transgressions are concentrated. This is a story about the power of tradition and social mores, and respecting our place in the great continuum of life. The novel is short (147 pages) and concise. The content is complex but beautifully illustrated by Kawabata. This is an excellent piece of literature in all aspects.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent study of guilt and consequents
Review: Although told in a simple style, this book explores the very complex responses to human interaction. The setting of the initial scene is a tea ceremony with the following primary characters: Kikuji, a bachelor whose parents are dead; Chikako, a bitter ex-mistress of his father and the go-between for a proposed marriage; Mrs. Ota another mistress of his father and her daughter.

Kawabata is superb in showing us the complex feelings that Kikuji and Mrs. Ota's daughter have towards his father and the two mistresses. While the responses are primarily shown through the action, the tea ceremony and the utensils surrounding it play a significant symbolic role.

This book is well worth putting on a must read list.

Rating:
Summary: very good
Review: I actually loved this book more the the reknowned Snow Country (Yukiguni). But that book was great too.

Rating:
Summary: Expiation in the Summer Heat, Japanese Style
Review: Mishima Yukio, that troubled, brilliant, versatile author of numerous great novels, said that if a Japanese writer was going to receive the Nobel Prize, it should be Kawabata Yasunari. The latter did win the prize in 1968, four years before his death. Both Kawabata and Mishima should be numbered among the great writers of the 20th century, both committed suicide, and both were Japanese. That's where the similarity ends. Any novel of Kawabata's opens the deep treasure of Japanese understatement, the minimalist style of sumi-e, haiku, and Noh theatre. Every sentence says less than expected, but as some people like to say nowadays, "less is more." So true. THOUSAND CRANES is brief and to many Western readers could appear overly simple and without strong flavor. To assume this would be to miss the main attraction of the novel, which, admittedly, might not be for everyone. In delicate brush strokes, the author deftly paints the picture of a complex relationship which would have attracted Henry James, had he not been so stoutly Victorian in his choice of plots. A young man has an affair with Mrs. Ota, his father's former mistress, rejects the meddling of a second woman, also a former mistress of his father's, and is attracted, full of guilt and hesitation, to Mrs. Ota's daughter. Like much Japanese writing, the novel is full of natural symbols as well as the signs of the seasons. Tiny details assume great importance, take on important symbolism----two tea bowls used by deceased lovers, an ugly birthmark on a woman's breast----details which would be drowned in the mass of verbiage present in most Western writing. Tea ceremony and the delicate beauty of old ceramics suffuse the pages. The novel is about sex, love, guilt, revenge, and the need for children to outgrow their parents' transgressions. The stunning part is that these words are almost never mentioned ! There is a belief in Japan that if a sick person can make a thousand paper cranes (origami style), they will recover. The title thus refers to a healing process, though the thousand cranes appear only on a kerchief carried by a girl whom the protagonist does not marry. This novel is a tour de force by one of Japan's and the world's best modern writers. If you want to try something completely different, I strongly recommend THOUSAND CRANES.

Rating:
Summary: Sex, Lies, Suicide, and Tea
Review: Sex, lies, suicide, and tea. This slim novel by Nobel Prize winner Kawabata Yasuni deals with Kikuji Mitani and his encounters with a wide variety of women: the poisonous Chikako, the haunted Mrs. Ota, and Fumiko, caught between her shame and her desire. The books moves at a leisurely pace, touching upon numerous subject: propriety, shame, and revenge. Kawabata shows his mastery here, crafting each character carefully, with precise nuance. I would recommend this book if only for the character of Chikako: both monstrous and tragic, she is one of the most interesting characters you will encounter in literature. Some Western readers will be off put by it's slow pace and decentralized plot, but the details and characterization will win you over in the end. One word of warning: although extensive knowledge of the tea ceremony is not need, and a brief introduction will fill you in on basically everything you need to know, readers may miss some of Kawabata's lush symbolism when it comes to the tea ceremony and the tea utensils. But even without that layer, it remains a masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: Stain of a dead woman's lipstick taints the rim of a teacup
Review: The metaphor used in "Thousand Cranes" is tea, but not simple dried leaves in boiled water. Along with tea, in the tradition of the Japanese tea ceremony, is the complete picture created by the individual pieces of the art, bowels and whisks and jugs for carrying water. The various utensils, each with their own pedigree, are only able to find their true use in the hands of a Master of tea.

In this story, the metaphor is skillfully brought to play in Kikuji, who has inherited his father's women and guilty past in the same way that he has inherited his tea cottage and collection or rare cups and utensils. Chikako, a discarded mistress of Kikuji's father, is the poisonous Master of tea, manipulating others with the same subtle skill she maneuvers the ceremony. In equal measure, Fumiko, daughter of Kikuji's father's favorite mistress, also struggles under the burden of inherited guilt, even while seeking to escape, giving her mother's tea items to Kikuji as gifts yet not able to free her mind with the same ease.

True to Kawabata's style, the unsaid rings much more loudly than the dialog, and surface tone of calm belies a raging whirlpool sucking the characters deeper and deeper. I found "Thousand Cranes" a captivating read, and was unable to put it down until I had finished the story. A small book, it does not lack for power.

Rating:
Summary: Stain of a dead woman's lipstick taints the rim of a teacup
Review: The metaphor used in "Thousand Cranes" is tea, but not simple dried leaves in boiled water. Along with tea, in the tradition of the Japanese tea ceremony, is the complete picture created by the individual pieces of the art, bowels and whisks and jugs for carrying water. The various utensils, each with their own pedigree, are only able to find their true use in the hands of a Master of tea.

In this story, the metaphor is skillfully brought to play in Kikuji, who has inherited his father's women and guilty past in the same way that he has inherited his tea cottage and collection or rare cups and utensils. Chikako, a discarded mistress of Kikuji's father, is the poisonous Master of tea, manipulating others with the same subtle skill she maneuvers the ceremony. In equal measure, Fumiko, daughter of Kikuji's father's favorite mistress, also struggles under the burden of inherited guilt, even while seeking to escape, giving her mother's tea items to Kikuji as gifts yet not able to free her mind with the same ease.

True to Kawabata's style, the unsaid rings much more loudly than the dialog, and surface tone of calm belies a raging whirlpool sucking the characters deeper and deeper. I found "Thousand Cranes" a captivating read, and was unable to put it down until I had finished the story. A small book, it does not lack for power.

Rating:
Summary: Too sentimental
Review: The sentimental and sexual education of a young man, who gets entangled in a spider web concocted by one of his father's mistresses.
The story is shrouded in an emotionally restrained and melancholic (remembrances of the passed away) atmosphere, which is always brutally broken by the interventions of the devilish intriguer.

The novel is full of symbols, but should more appeal to the Japanese than to foreign readers. The tea ceremony is an important part of it, e.g. the author relates the deep impressions made by tea sets on the participants (because they have hundreds of years of age and their ancestors drank already out of them).

Some reactions of the main characters seemed to me exaggerated and they cried nearly on every occasion.

Only for the aficionados of the Japanese novel.

Rating:
Summary: The Shards of a Tea bowl
Review: This was the third Yasunari Kawabata book I have read and I have to say that this one is my favorite so far. The story centers around the figure of Kikuji, the son of a man who was fond of the Tea Ceremony. Sometime after his father's death, Kikuji goes to a tea ceremony led by Kurimoto Chikako his father's former mistress. Chikako had been tossed aside by Kikuji's father several years before, but had stuck by the family even becoming friends with Kikuji's mother. Chikako invited Kikuji to the tea ceremony because she wanted him to see a girl named Inamura Yukiko who Chikako hoped he would marry. However, things don't fall into place as easily as Chikako hoped because Mrs. Ota, another one of Kikuji's father's mistresses, brought her daughther to the tea ceremony. Things continue on from there. The characters of the book are under-developed so the reader does not really care for them there really is no attachment to the characters, but Kawabata uses his magnificent writing skills to make a world of beautiful detail, one can almost see and smell the roses in the Shino water jar, and feel the soft coolness of Mrs. Ota's skin. beautiful book. Quick and easy read. I look forward to reading _Sound of the Mountain_ next.

Rating:
Summary: hard to fathom or to like
Review: Words fail me in the effort to express the superhuman act of will which was required to continue reading this book after the opening scene, wherein a young boy, Kikuji, spies his father's mistress clipping hairs from the birthmark which covers most of her breast. Try shaking that image from your head. At any rate, Kikuji, now a grown man, becomes involved with both another mistress of his now deceased father's and her daughter. Meanwhile, the birthmarked mistress somehow feels free to meddle in his life and tries to set him up with another young woman. All of this is set against the backdrop of the ritual of the ancient Japanese tea ceremony. Eventually, as it must, tragedy strikes as one woman after another commits suicide.

Yeah, so?

If the word dysfunctional did not exist, it would have to have been invented to describe Kikuji's romantic life. As if wading through your old man's detritus was not bad enough, topping it off by pursuing a mother and daughter would have to be described as begging for trouble. Add to this the fact that none of the characters are terribly likable and that Kikuji is almost completely passive and you've got a book that is hard to fathom or to like. Ultimately, I felt like there were too few suicides--I wanted them all put out of my misery and that birthmark trimming schtick purged from my memory.

GRADE: D