| Yasunari Kawabata(1899-1972) was a famous Japanese novelist born into a doctor’s family in Osaka, Japan. After the successive death of his parents, sister and grandmother, Yasunari was orphaned. At the age of 14, his grandfather passed away. Such life experience and the subsequent wandering life made him a sentimental and lonely man. In 1926, his publication of short story The Dancing Girl of Izu established his position as a writer. In 1968, his excellent novels such as Snow Country, Thousand Cranes and The Old Capital won him the Nobel Prize for Literature.So far, there are voluminous studies related to Kawabata Literature and a certain amount of the results have already been achieved to precede the pure study of writers and even some of them overstep the boundaries of nation and country. However, In terms of the characteristics of women in Kawabata Literature, the studies mostly center on the traditional Japanese culture. In terms of research methods, these studies generally analyze the characters’ origin as well as the relationship between these characters; while in this study, the author focuses on women’s dual character. Throughout Kawabata’s works, no matter created in the earlier time or created during the war, a lot of female images can be found, which are all characterized by typical duality. This duality can be specifically categorized into the following four points: 1. delicate yet strong; 2. persistent but compromised; 3. in a humble status but have noble pursuits; 4. possess the ideal image of beauty but have tragic endings. In terms of research method, the author discusses the representative language and detailed actions and conducts in-depth studies from an unique perspective after taking into account the scenes and objects that represent people’s character.In this paper, the textual close reading method is adopted to conduct the interpretation and analysis and the four characteristics of the heroines in Kawabata Literature are demonstrated through Yasunari’s personal experience and the traditional Japanese culture, and then the reasons for the formation of such characteristics, namely the dual character of Japanese, is explained. Specifically, the paper is divided into six chapters. In Chapter 1, three aspects including the motivation and significance of the research, the previous studies and research methods are described. In Chapter 2, the characteristics of heroines in The Sound of the Mountain, The Dancing Girl of Izu and Snow Country are analyzed from different perspectives to outline the delicate yet strong characteristics of females. In the meantime, the reasons for the formation of these characteristics are analyzed through Yasunari’s personal life experience, emotional experience and the social creation background. In Chapter 3, through the analysis of representative language and detailed behavior descriptions in Snow Country, The Old Capital and Beauty and Sadness, the persistent but compromised characteristics of the heroine are presented. In Chapter 4, the characteristics of being in a humble status but having noble pursuits are discussed through the analysis of representative language and detailed behavior descriptions in Hot Spring Hotel, Snow Country and The Dancing Girl of Izu. In the fifth chapter, the sharp contrast of "beauty" and "sadness" of female under the influence of traditional Japanese aesthetics is presented through the analysis of representative language and detailed behavior descriptions in Sleeping Beauties, Thousand Cranes and Days and Months as well as through the scenes and objects that represent people’s character. As for the root causes for the formation of the four characteristics of heroines, the dual character of Japanese is pointed out in the sixth chapter of this paper. |
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