Kawabata And Painting

As an author that moves the reader with the outstanding impressibility, the unique charm of Kawabata's literature results from the open-minded art visual field, the subtle feeling of life, and the multidimensional manner of art thought. People have no controversy on this point of view, however, they usually neglect this genius writer has abundant artistic resources of painting. No matter what is taken into account, from his familial edification, individual hobby of drawing, intimate relationship with Japanese painters, or his taste of painting influenced by Buddhism, the spiritual enlightenment come from Japanese traditional natural concept, technical perfection and practical tradition, and Japanese classic painting, we can find that Kawabata's life has tied to painting indissociably.The influence of painting towards Kawabata is comprehensive. It constitutes the organic part of his life. More importantly, Kawabata has transformed his comprehension of painting into his writing technique. He used painting elements expertly and self-consciously, let them integrate with the language organically, then those elements become the method that displays his thought and emotion, increase esthetic value of his literary work as well. When using those elements as writing technique, Kawabata tried to do it ingeniously, it must have some emotion or motive that inspired him. He mentioned that painting could help him to be calm and peaceful several times. In his life, the more painful he suffered trauma experience, the closer he concentrated with painting. His subjective consciousness and life experience all indicates the possibility that the spiritual connection of him and painting is"pictorial therapy". Besides aesthetic purpose, the painting has another function namely"the psychotropic function". Kawabata chose painting as the therapy to cure his trauma experience and disease consciousness.This article takes cross-study perspective, makes use of the painting theory, artistic-psychology and artistic therapy theory, makes them clear with Kawabata's works commutatively, to research deeply on the relationship of painting and Kawabata's experience, writing skills and psychology by combining analyse and demonstration. Accordingly, we can grasp Kawabata's unique artistic thought better, and provide a new method to understand the abstruse implication in his works.