Lo bello y lo triste

Lo bello y lo triste (title in Japanese: 美しさと哀しみと, title in English: Beauty and Sadness) by Yasunari Kawabata. Emecé. Translated by Nélida M. de Machain.

I bought Lo bello at a book fair in the Zócalo several months ago. I like Emecé’s format, and since they publish books by Borges, I figured it was worth a look to see what else they publish. Emecé did not let me down. (¿”¡Emecé PLV!”?) Interestingly, on the page that has the copyright notice, edition info, etc. (is there a name for that page? If so, what is it?), the title of the English translation is also given. I doubt the book was translated from Japanese to English to Spanish, but it’s possible.

The book itself is about an author of some fifty years, Oki, who goes to look up an old flame, Otoko, whom he does find. He also meets her protégée, Keiko, a character of some ambiguity. Lo bello y lo triste chronicles their adventures, past and present.

I’ve only read books (as an adult) by one other Japanese author, Haruki Murakami. I guess it’s inevitable, if a bit provincial, that I make comparisons between the two. (I found myself making similar comparisons between Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco, and I’ve only read one book by each, although both Foucault’s Pendulum and If on a winter’s night a traveller talk quite a lot about books qua books.) So, given a very small sample of Kawabata’s œuvre, here are some comparisons.

Kawabata is more descriptive than Murakami, and describes colors and sensations more vividly. On the other hand, Murakami’s books tend to get to the point, and seem more believable; they’re generally (always? I can’t remember now) written in the first person, and as such he doesn’t try to get inside the heads of all of his characters. He only needs to understand one of them. When Kawabata recounts conversations between two women, I have to wonder how realistic - and thus believable - they really are.

There are aspects to Lo bello that are recognizable in books by Murakami, particularly South of the Border, West of the Sun and Tokio Blues (Norwegian Wood) - which isn’t to say that I’d call Murakami derivative; he is anything but.

Some Japanese critics have apparently criticized Murakami for being too Westernized; I’m not aware of any such charge leveled against Kawabata. As such, and even if the language weren’t beautiful and the plot weren’t interesting, new insight into a very different culture is worth the admission price alone.

Recommended.