On Yasunari Kawabata's Mini-novels

Yasunari Kawabata, the winner of Nobel Prize for Literature, He was known as a New-Feeling school writer after he made his debut in literary circles. He exerted a great influence upon and added much splendor to Japanese literary circles by creating a new form of modernist aesthetics. Based on the magical combination of classical aesthetics and the art of New Feeling, his works display fully Japanese traditional aesthetics. As a prolific writer, his works are greatly diversified, including mini-novels, novels, verses, literary criticisms, etc. Among all Kawabata's literary works, mini-novels are most likely to be ignored or forgotten, nevertheless, they are the most important part exhibiting his writing styles. Nagatani Kawaizumi, an expert studying Kawabata's literary works, claimed that the mini-novels served as crucial road-signs in studying Kawabata's works. The access to Kawabata's literary works is not The Dancing Girl in Iteo but the mini-vovels. This paper examines and illustrates the mini-novels in several dimensions like origin of its name, birth background, internal and external factors in definition, quantitative statistics, period identification, groups them into 21 categories from different angles and elucidates each of them. Kawabata's mini-novels are characterized with a variety of subjects, flexible styles, rich contents of daily life, vivid depiction of inner feelings and spirits of his time. Readers find these mini-novels profound and implicative, true to meanings, easy to read, and hence very fascinating. These mini-novels are the essential part of Kawabata's literature and are of far and reaching significance. An in-depth and thorough study of them is a crucial approach to acquiring overall Kawabata's literature.