The Old Capital

Winner of the Nobel Prize

9784805317976
Tuttle Publishing
Yasunari Kawabata
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The Old Capital is of one of the three works for which Yasunari Kawabata won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Set in Kyoto — the old capital of Japan for a thousand years — this lyric novel traces the life of Chieko, the beloved adopted daughter of a kimono designer and his wife. Believing that she had been kidnapped by the couple as a baby, Chieko learns one day that she was instead a foundling, left abandoned on a doorstep. Happy with her adopted parents, however, her security and contentment remain undisturbed until an answered prayer at the famous Yasaka Shrine dramatically alters the course of her life.

'Kawabata’s novels are among the most affecting and original works of our time.' — Ivan Morris

'Yasunari Kawabata...weaves in countless quintessentially Japanese motifs, from the Bamboo Cutting Ceremony and the Imperial Offering of Cucumbers. Suddenly, though, in the middle of all this, a Sony radio starts to chatter, and the story’s elegiac, and prophetic, depth is doubled.' — The New Yorker

9784805317976
Contributor Bio

Over two decades after his death in 1972, Yasunari Kawabata remains one of Japan’s most distinguished and widely translated writers. In 1968 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, the first Japanese to win the prestigious award.

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9784805317976
9784805317976