Yasunari Kawabata

Yasunari Kawabata was born near Osaka in 1899. He studied Japanese and English literature at the Imperial University of Tokyo. In 1955, a year after his graduation, he made his debut in the Japanese literary scene with the book "The Dancing Girl of Izu." The novels that brought him international recognition are "Snow Country" (1956) and "Thousand Cranes" (1959). In 1968, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His writings uniquely combine the novelistic form with that of haiku poetry. In addition to being a writer, he was also a literary critic and helped promote authors such as Yukio Mishima. He died by suicide on April 16, 1972.