Thousand Cranes

The novel Thousand Cranes (in Japanese, Senbazuru) was written by Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata. It was originally published in serialized form between 1949 and 1951 and compiled with another of Kawabata’s novels, Snow Country (1948), in book form in 1952. The narrative follows Kikuji, an orphaned young businessman, as he navigates the legacy of his father’s infidelity against the backdrop of traditional Japanese tea culture. It explores themes of Decay of Traditions and Values, Legacy: Imperfect Transmission and Inevitability, and The Juxtaposition of Beauty and Ugliness.

Kawabata is one of the most celebrated and influential Japanese writers of the 20th century and the first Japanese person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was the president of Japanese PEN from 1948 to 1965, an officer of the French Order of Arts and Letters in 1960, and a recipient of the Japanese Order of Culture in 1961. Thousand Cranes is widely recognized as one of Kawabata’s most accomplished novels and is studied worldwide to this day. The novel was selected for inclusion in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Collection of Representative Works and was one of three works (along with Snow Country and The Old Capital) cited by the committee that awarded Kawabata the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968.