Primera nieve en el monte Fuji

Estos relatos son a la vez una ventana al muy específico mundo doméstico de la posguerra japonesa y una reflexión, destilada al máximo, sobre los sentimientos y las contradicciones humanas, sobre el ser y la memoria, sobre las incógnitas de la belleza y del silencio. Dos de ellos, Yumira y El cristantemo en la roca, fueron incluidos posteriormente en una antología de sus cuentos favoritos que se publicó poco después de que recibiera el Premio Nobel de Literatura en 1968. Esta antología es una fina muestra de la grandeza de Kawabata. En los pequeños mundos de trazos delicados que se abren con cada cuento, en medio de sus resonancias y su luminosidad, descubrimos siempre la inteligencia inquisitiva y el humor de uno de los grandes del siglo XX. Although he was the first Japanese writer to win the Nobel Prize, Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) remains much more obscure in the West than his high-profile protégé Yukio Mishima. Yet he's a writer of formidable talents. For one thing, Kawabata recognized early on the affinity between Japanese poetry--with its abrupt transition from image to image--and the jump-cut flavor of modernist prose. He also explored erotic life at a truly microcosmic level. Some may find a novel like The Mole--which revolves around a woman's habit of fiddling with her eponymous birthmark--a little too molecular in its approach. But sex, like God, is in the details, and throughout his career Kawabata has unearthed some surprising truths about our most urgent appetites. First Snow on Fuji, a collection of stories originally published in 1958, is a fairly representative slice of the author's oeuvre. In "Her Husband Didn't" (a classic Kawabata title, by the way), a woman's earlobe becomes the discreet object of desire: