Thank you for this video, you guys had some really good toughts about this book. Even though he might be a jerk, Shingo is definitely my favorite character, due to the fact that he is so human.
I read a biography of Mishima which had a fair bit about Kawabata. Here's what it said about The Old Capital: "As Kawabata candidly admitted in his own afterword to 'The Old Capital', his long-term dependence on sleeping pills had gotten worse just before he started serializing the novel in the 'Asahi Shimbun', in early October 1961. As a result, he barely knew what he was writing throughout the serialization, although he managed to finish it, at the end of January 1962. Shortly afterward, he stopped taking sleeping pills, but that precipitated such violent withdrawal symptoms that he was rushed to University of Tokyo Hospital and remained unconscious for ten days. Sure enough, when he finally mustered enough of his wits and sat down to revise the story for publication in book form, Kawabata found many 'irregularities,' a number of 'places that do not make sense'. Kawabata was truthful about the sleeping pills and the hospitalization after the fact but not about the novel that concerns beautiful twin sisters in Kyoto. The daily installments as he wrote them, for a total of 107 installments, were mostly unusable, and someone else had to rewrite them. As Mishima tells it, this hospitalization was done in secrecy. Behind this was the common practice of famous or popular writers having ghostwriters, often magazine editors but also independent writers. Kawabata had had a couple of writers, including the redoubtable Ito Sei and the noted critic Senuma Shigeki, who had stood in for him since the war. One 'Shincho' editor averred that among the leading postwar writers only Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo did no such thing. Mishima himself was not truthful, either; he had written much - how much remains unknown - of '(House of) Sleeping Beauties', which was serialized in 'Shincho' from January 1960 to November 1961, with a good deal of interruption, with Kawabata's hospitalization at the end of 1960."
Thanks for this insightful discussion! I think that the book should be read through the prism of the nature metaphors as well as one of the central themes of emerging love between Shingo and Kikuko. For example the two pines that Shingo notices on a train could represent Shingo and Kikuko’s relationship, growing close to each other, but never touching. Shuichi confronts Shingo and channels his anger about this relationship to Shingo in the end of the book after which Shingo sets Kikuko free and then asks if she would live apart from him. Perhaps this relationship has caused Shuichi to seek the relationship outside of his marriage in the first place and Shingo is struggling throughout the book because he knows that if he causes that relationship to end, then his and Kikuko’s relationship will have to change as well. Subconsciously he knows about it, but over time the pines and the strangers that look like the father and the daughter on the train make him realize it. The ending pages represent the end of Shingo’s life and the budding off of his family, however broken it might be. Fusako asks for the money for the business, Shingo and Yatsuko are going to live in a house in the mountains that they are going to fix up and Shuichi is going to look after the house, read: take over for Shingo. I wouldn’t judge Shingo so harshly for being a loser. I love the idea that one of you has expressed about him drawing his inspiration for dealing with his life from nature. I completely agree and I think that this is the central theme that runs through this book. Perhaps he might appear as a loser to the modern reader, but taking into consideration the older Japanese generation’s connection to nature and searching in it for answers on how to deal with real life problems, he may not be.
I think this was serialised in a paper.... Hence the repetition. Also, Kawabata became addicted to sleeping pills and often confused. Others would amend his texts....or even write them.
I love this book man this was really good and im gonna listen to more
Thanks for listening!
Wow, to find this 4 years after its initial release
This is a gem ❤️
Thanks! That was early days, and a great book.
Thank you for this video, you guys had some really good toughts about this book. Even though he might be a jerk, Shingo is definitely my favorite character, due to the fact that he is so human.
Thank you for listening. Yasunari Kawabata is such a master of creating very real human characters.
I read a biography of Mishima which had a fair bit about Kawabata. Here's what it said about The Old Capital: "As Kawabata candidly admitted in his own afterword to 'The Old Capital', his long-term dependence on sleeping pills had gotten worse just before he started serializing the novel in the 'Asahi Shimbun', in early October 1961. As a result, he barely knew what he was writing throughout the serialization, although he managed to finish it, at the end of January 1962. Shortly afterward, he stopped taking sleeping pills, but that precipitated such violent withdrawal symptoms that he was rushed to University of Tokyo Hospital and remained unconscious for ten days. Sure enough, when he finally mustered enough of his wits and sat down to revise the story for publication in book form, Kawabata found many 'irregularities,' a number of 'places that do not make sense'.
Kawabata was truthful about the sleeping pills and the hospitalization after the fact but not about the novel that concerns beautiful twin sisters in Kyoto. The daily installments as he wrote them, for a total of 107 installments, were mostly unusable, and someone else had to rewrite them. As Mishima tells it, this hospitalization was done in secrecy.
Behind this was the common practice of famous or popular writers having ghostwriters, often magazine editors but also independent writers. Kawabata had had a couple of writers, including the redoubtable Ito Sei and the noted critic Senuma Shigeki, who had stood in for him since the war. One 'Shincho' editor averred that among the leading postwar writers only Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo did no such thing.
Mishima himself was not truthful, either; he had written much - how much remains unknown - of '(House of) Sleeping Beauties', which was serialized in 'Shincho' from January 1960 to November 1961, with a good deal of interruption, with Kawabata's hospitalization at the end of 1960."
Thanks for this insightful discussion!
I think that the book should be read through the prism of the nature metaphors as well as one of the central themes of emerging love between Shingo and Kikuko. For example the two pines that Shingo notices on a train could represent Shingo and Kikuko’s relationship, growing close to each other, but never touching. Shuichi confronts Shingo and channels his anger about this relationship to Shingo in the end of the book after which Shingo sets Kikuko free and then asks if she would live apart from him. Perhaps this relationship has caused Shuichi to seek the relationship outside of his marriage in the first place and Shingo is struggling throughout the book because he knows that if he causes that relationship to end, then his and Kikuko’s relationship will have to change as well. Subconsciously he knows about it, but over time the pines and the strangers that look like the father and the daughter on the train make him realize it.
The ending pages represent the end of Shingo’s life and the budding off of his family, however broken it might be. Fusako asks for the money for the business, Shingo and Yatsuko are going to live in a house in the mountains that they are going to fix up and Shuichi is going to look after the house, read: take over for Shingo.
I wouldn’t judge Shingo so harshly for being a loser. I love the idea that one of you has expressed about him drawing his inspiration for dealing with his life from nature. I completely agree and I think that this is the central theme that runs through this book. Perhaps he might appear as a loser to the modern reader, but taking into consideration the older Japanese generation’s connection to nature and searching in it for answers on how to deal with real life problems, he may not be.
Great insight.
I think this was serialised in a paper.... Hence the repetition. Also, Kawabata became addicted to sleeping pills and often confused. Others would amend his texts....or even write them.
It was, indeed, serialized. Who would amend his texts? Editors? Family members? That's wild.
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