The Izu Dancer

Yasunari Kawabata, 1925.

I have never read Kawabata and thought I would pick this up in advance of a trip to Japan.  I read the title story and was captivated.  This one story is in fact what established his reputation and probably paved his way for the Nobel.

But the translation, by Edward Seidensticker, felt clunky.  So I got another translation, this time just of Kawabata's stories, and the translation by J. Holman felt a bit better, but still halting and rickety.  I can't tell if its just these translations of in fact that was the style Kawabata used.

There is one critical sentence, in particular, that both translators seem to have butchered.  In the story, the young narrator, drawn to a very young dancing girl, accompanies her and her family for several days through the Izu peninsula as they walk from inn to inn, performing at night for the guests.  He is initially attracted by her beauty, and is very conscious of their class differences, yet wins their trust and friendship.  After several days he comes to a key realization:

"I came to see that the life of the traveling performer was not the forbidding one I had imagined.  Rather it was easy-going, relaxed, carrying with it the scent of meadows and mountains." (Seidensticker).

or

"I realized that their sense of the road was not so hardened as I had first supposed.  Rather, it was more of a lighthearted attitude that had not lost the scent of the fields." (Holman).

The first version seems obviously better to me, but it is indeed a touch more lyrical and simple -- and sadly I have no idea whether that was the effect intended, or what it feels like in Japanese.

That apart, the title story continues in a vein that is superficially detached but touching, until the end, when the encounter has the effect of nudging the young narrator closer to self-forgiveness and true adulthood.  It reminded me of "Teesri Kasam" (The Third Vow) by Phaneeshwar Nath Renu.

I also liked "Diary of My Sixteenth Year", an experiment in memory and narrative but also a semi-autobiographical narrative of a boy dealing with the death of his beloved grandfather.  In some sense it sets the stage for "The Izu Dancer".

I didn't really care for the other stories, particularly the short-short (or "palm") stories for which Kawabata was famous.  Far too self-consciously modern, somewhat pretentious in their jarring juxtapositions and odd narrative techniques, and ultimately not interesting.

3*
Apr 2012