42 pages • 1 hour read
Yasunari KawabataThousand Cranes
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1952A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Decay of Traditions and Values
Thousand Cranes was written in the years immediately following Japan’s defeat in the World War II. At this time, hardship and poverty were widespread across the nation, and national pride had suffered a serious blow. Kawabata believed that many elements of traditional Japanese culture had been degraded in modern times and used his work to critique what he saw as a devaluation of Japanese heritage. In Thousand Cranes, Kawabata depicts the figurative decay of neglected traditions and values through his presentation of the tea ceremony, and he uses the relationships and reminiscences of his characters to convey a sense of collective nostalgia for an idealized but ultimately unattainable past.
The tea ceremony is a centuries-old, highly venerated cultural practice in Japan. Despite his rejection of what had been his father’s hobby, Kikuji is nonetheless drawn into participating, thereby connected with two of his father’s former mistresses. The tea ceremony in Part 1 is the most formal and traditional of the depicted ceremonies; the only one properly organized in advance, with numerous invited guests, and students to assist the presiding tea mistress, Chikako. Later tea ceremonies are small impromptu or informal affairs that only obliquely evoke the ceremonial aspects of tea making, thereby reflecting Kawabata’s view that the tea ceremony was drifting further and further from the nostalgic heights of its former peak. In Thousand Cranes, the tea ceremonies function as a microcosm of contemporary engagement with Japanese cultural traditions. In this way, Kawabata critiques modern attitudes toward traditional art forms and criticizes the state of contemporary Japanese culture by showing the tea ceremony slipping into degradation and decay.
Decay is also shown through Kikuji’s neglect of his father’s tea cottage and collection of tea ware. Kikuji, an everyman figure representative of the younger generation as a whole, has no interest in continuing his father’s interest in tea and consequently leaves the valuable paraphernalia of the ceremony unused. The tatami mats of the tea cottage are damp and damaged by mildew, smelling stale no matter how Chikako tries to clean them. The eaves of the cottage are damaged too, and Kikuji doesn’t think it worth the effort or expense to fix them up. He plans instead to sell the cottage and abandon his heritage wholesale. By the final part of the novel, he is intending to sell off his father’s collection of tea ware, too.
Depictions of the ancient tea ware used in the ceremonies, with various pieces described in meticulous detail, are also laden with nostalgia for past traditions and values. The ancient tea bowls repeatedly call to Kikuji’s mind the centuries of tea masters and guests who used them. For Mrs. Ota, they evoke fond memories of her husband and lover, although such reminiscences are a source of conflict for Kikuji. Following Mrs. Ota’s death, she too is remembered through the tea ware that she used. Her Shino water jug forcefully reminds Kikuji not of Mrs. Ota as she actually was but of a romanticized and idealized version of her with whom he feels himself falling in love posthumously.
Yukiko also represents a nostalgia for times past. In her graceful comportment, beauty, and demure manner, she embodies an ideal version of traditional Japanese femininity. Her association with the tea ceremony, the institution of marriage, and the fact that Kikuji only sees her dressed in a traditional kimono, all evoke an idealized version of historical society. Despite his attraction toward her, Kikuji chooses not to marry Yukiko, putting her—and the nostalgic version of the past that she represents—forever out of his reach. Furthermore, even though she is described as “fresh” and juxtaposed to the decay and darkness of the older women and their sordid pasts, she is nonetheless tainted in Kikuji’s eyes through her association with Chikako. This suggests that the decay of the present state goes hand in hand with a nostalgia for the past.
Legacy: Imperfect Transmission and Inevitability
Ancestor worship is a key component of the traditional Japanese Shinto religion, and respect for one’s elders and family history remains an important cornerstone of Japanese culture and society to this day. The legacy—be it genetic, material, or spiritual—left by one’s predecessors is therefore of utmost importance, and the concept of legacy is key to Thousand Cranes.
Kawabata explores the impact of a parent’s legacy through the characters of Kikuji and Fumiko in particular. Both of them take after their parents, and through Chikako’s tea ceremonies they both become entangled in the relationships and grudges left to them by their parents. Each acts as a proxy for their deceased parent; Kikuji as his father for Mrs. Ota, and Fumiko as Mrs. Ota for Kikuji. It is as though they are puppets of their parents’ ghosts, or rather by the memories left by their parents in the minds of others. As the two characters play out the same mistakes that their parents made, Kawabata creates a sense of inevitability around their eventual coming together.
The pair of bowls used in the tea ceremony in Part 5 of the novel represents the legacy passed down to Fumiko and Kikuji by their parents. Just as the two of them inherited the pieces from their parents, so too have they inherited a romantic connection that spans the generations. By bringing the tea bowl to Kikuji and encouraging him to bring out his father’s bowl, Fumiko is symbolically offering herself up to Kikuji as a romantic prospect, although with the caveats and second thoughts that characterize her conflicted feelings toward him. There is an air of inevitability in the relationship between Fumiko and Kikuji from the moment the two cups are placed together and recognized as a pair.
However, Kawabata also shows that intergenerational transmission is flawed, particularly across the generational lines that divided Japan during the mid-20th century. The high death toll of World War II saw many family lines severed, and many young people were left without the links that would traditionally connect them to their heritage and family history. Kawabata himself was orphaned young and knew well the imperfections of parent-child inheritance and the confusion of identity that could befall one bereft of ties to their cultural traditions and family legacies. Both Fumiko and Kikuji cut lonesome figures, particularly after the loss of Mrs. Ota, the last parent between them. They are both conflicted about the legacy left to them, just as many ancient Japanese traditions became controversial and unpopular for their associations with the disgraced Imperial regime. Fumiko embraces Western styles of dress in lieu of the traditional kimono, and Kikuji is resolutely uninterested in the traditional art of the tea ceremony. In this way, they each distance themselves from the legacy left by their forbearers and illustrate the imperfection inherent in the transmission of a legacy.
The pair of bowls also illustrates that the transmission of this inherited relationship across the generations is imperfect. Kikuji may own his father’s tea bowl, but he does not share his father’s appreciation of the tea ceremony or his knowledge of Japanese ceramics and tea ware. Similarly, just as the tea bowl has been stained by use or Mrs. Ota’s lipstick, Fumiko has been harmed and shaped by her mother’s influence. Although they try to conduct a tea ceremony using the bowls, Fumiko is unable to prepare the matcha, claiming that her mother won’t allow her to do so. Despite the inheritance that they have received from their parents, their parents’ failings and neglect have also deprived Kikuji and Fumiko of the ability to recreate the happiness that their parents found together.
Fumiko considers the Shino tea bowl a weaker piece than the Shino water jug that represents her mother and regrets giving it to Kikuji—eventually smashing it. Breaking the bowl is as an act of self-destruction analogous to the suicide that Kikuji fears for her. However, by breaking the bowl Fumiko is freeing herself of the weight of her mother’s legacy, leaving her free to escape the cycle of doomed romance that she and Kikuji would otherwise be fated to repeat, meaning that her disappearance from Kikuji’s life at the end of the novel marks her liberation rather than her death.
The Juxtaposition of Beauty and Ugliness
Kawabata was a founder of the Japanese Shinkankakuha movement, which focused on the importance of art for its own sake and the aesthetic beauty of novel experiences and impressions alongside the European Impressionist, Dadaist and Modernist movements. Consequently then, beauty is a major theme in all of Kawabata’s works, often enhanced or contrasted by juxtaposition to ugliness in its extreme. Kawabata studied Japanese literature and was well-versed in traditional Japanese cultural aesthetics, which inform his explorations of beauty and ugliness.
Zen Buddhism, which had a major influence on the development of the tea ceremony, values beauty that is ephemeral and fleeting. Such images of soon-to-fade beauty abound in Thousand Cranes, for instance in descriptions of cut flowers and Kikuji’s appreciation for the fresh beauty of a young woman. Japanese culture has a rich tradition of glorifying beauty in the female form, with historical courtesan and performance artists such as Geisha perfecting elaborate stylized and formalized beauty standards in all facets of their appearance. Additionally, even in the mid-20th century, the role of women in Japan was very traditional. Women had an unequal position in the patriarchal society and were generally still expected to attract a husband, marry, and then raise children rather than pursue a career. Physical appearance and desirability were therefore considered important traits, and cultivating outward beauty was often seen to correspond with the cultivation of virtue and internal qualities. In keeping with such traditions, and with the novel’s focus on romantic relationships, much emphasis is placed on Kikuji’s impressions of the appearance of various female characters.
The beauty of the women to whom Kikuji is drawn is described in detail, while the “poisonous” and manipulative Chikako is described as decidedly unattractive. In fact, many of Chikako’s negative qualities are associated with or even ascribed to the perceived physical “flaw” of her birth mark. She is further criticized for her “sexlessness,” with Kikuji considering her to have lost her femininity along with her attractiveness. The ugliness of Chikako and her birthmark from Kikuji’s perspective is contrasted with the attractiveness of Mrs. Ota. Kikuji is drawn to Mrs. Ota whom he describes as “soft,” whereas Chikako’s body is “hard” and repulses him.
Chikako’s ugliness is also contrasted with the freshness and beauty of the two younger women, Yukiko and Fumiko. The young women are often associated with flowers, as when Yukiko wears a Japanese iris-patterned kimono alongside fresh Siberian irises for the tea ceremony. They are also connected closely with the colors white and red, which are celebrated even on the Japanese flag and associated with traditional Japanese standards of beauty. Chikako, on the other hand, is repeatedly associated with the color black and with darkness. Her birthmark and the hairs that grow on it are described as “dark” and “black” respectively, and the same words are used to describe her eyes, her moods, and her character. Her final meeting with Kikuji is held entirely in shadow.
The juxtaposition of beauty and ugliness is particularly striking in that the tumultuous, imperfect, and often ugly relationships between the characters in the novel are played out against a backdrop of traditional beauty: the tea ceremony and all its paraphernalia. Kawabata evokes the traditional romances and tragedies of Japanese literature by using a setting that exemplifies good taste and understated beauty. The ugly depiction of modern society that is shown through the flawed characters and their relationships is therefore thrown into even sharper definition through the contrast.
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