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 First English-language edition | |
| Author | Yasunari Kawabata |
|---|---|
| Original title |
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| Translator | Edward Seidensticker |
| Language | Japanese |
| Publication date | 1949–1954 |
| Publication place | Japan |
| Published in English | 1970 (Knopf) |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
The Sound of the Mountain (Japanese: 山の音, Hepburn: Yama no oto) is a novel by Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata, serialized between 1949 and 1954, and first published as a standalone book in 1954 by Chikuma Shobō, Tokyo.
Plot
Shingo Ogata, a businessman living in Kamakura and working in Tokyo, is close to retirement. He is experiencing temporary lapses of memory, recalling strange and disturbing dreams upon waking, and hearing sounds, including the titular noise which awakens him from his sleep, "like wind, far away, but with a depth like a rumbling of the earth." Shingo takes the sound to be an omen of his impending death. At the same time, he is repeatedly confronted with the passing away of friends and former fellow students.
Shingo observes and questions his relations with the other family members. He married his wife Yasuko after the untimely death of her older sister, whose beauty Shingo adored, considering both her and their daughter Fusako being rather unattractive. Shingo has both fatherly and subtle erotic feelings for his daughter-in-law Kikuko, who calmly endures his son Shūichi's affair with another woman. When Fusako leaves her husband and returns to the family home with her two little children, Shingo starts to perceive the marital difficulties of Fusako and Shūichi as the result of not fulfilling his role as a father. In addition, Fusako blames him for marrying her to a man she did not want, and for preferring Kikuko over her.
Shingo's secretary Eiko helps him to find Shūichi's mistress Kinuko, a war widow, and learns of his son's mean and abusive behaviour towards her. Not only is Shūichi reluctant to his father's request to end the affair and treat his wife Kikuko with more respect, he even borrows money from his mistress to pay for Kikuko's abortion. Shingo is devastated, speculating if Shūichi's and Kikuko's dead child might have been the reincarnation of Yasuko's older sister. Shūichi eventually leaves Kinuko when she expects a child, which she claims to be from another man, and decides to keep it. In the newspaper, Shingo and his family read about the suicide attempt of Fusako's husband, whom she is about to divorce.
Characters
Shingo Ogata Yasuko, Shingo's wife Shūichi, Shingo's son Kikuko, Shuichi's wife Fusako, Shingo's daughter Eizo Tanazaki, Shingo's secretary Kinuko, Shuichi's mistress Ikeda, Kinuko's flatmate Satoko, Fusako's elder daughter
Major themes
The novel can be interpreted as a meditation of aging and its attendant decline, and coming to terms with one's mortality. Even as Shingo regrets not being present for his family and blames himself for his children's failing marriages, the natural world comes alive for him in a whole new way, provoking meditations on life, love, and companionship.
Style
The Sound of the Mountain is unusually long for a Kawabata novel, running to 276 pages in its English translation. Like much of his work, it is written in short, spare prose akin to poetry, which its English-language translator Edward Seidensticker likened to a haiku in the introduction to his translation of Kawabata's best-known novel, Snow Country.
Reception and legacy
The book is included in the Norwegian Bokklubben World Library's list of the 100 greatest works of world literature.
For the first U.S. edition (1970), Seidensticker won the National Book Award in the category Translation.
Adaptations
Kawabata's novel was adapted into a film as Sound of the Mountain in 1954, directed by Mikio Naruse and starring Setsuko Hara, Sō Yamamura and Ken Uehara.
References
- ^ Kawabata, Yasunari (1996). The Sound of the Mountain (Impressum). Translated by Seidensticker, Edward G. New York: Vintage International. ISBN 0-679-76264-7.
- "National Book Awards 1971 winners". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 20 June 2021.
| Works by Yasunari Kawabata | |
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| Short stories |
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