Japanese · 1899–1972
Yasunari Kawabata won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968 "for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind." "Snow Country" (1935-47), "Thousand Cranes" (1949), and "The Sound of the Mountain" (1949) established his reputation. Kawabata's prose is spare and melancholy; his attention to beauty carries an undercurrent of death. He committed suicide in 1972.