SOURCE: "The Asymmetrical Garden: Discovering Yasunari Kawabata," in Southwest Review, Vol. 74, No. 3, Summer, 1989, pp. 390-402.

In the following essay, Palmer examines Kawabata's Palm-of-the-Hand Stories in an attempt to demonstrate that the form the author employed in these pieces was much more congenial to his talents than the novel form.

In 1968, Yasunari Kawabata became the first Japanese writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. Concerning this unprecedented citation, Professor Donald Keene, in his gargantuan work of scholarship (Dawn To The West, 1984), writes: "The Japanese public was naturally delighted to learn of the award, though surprise was expressed that a writer who was difficult to understand even for Japanese should have been so appreciated abroad."

While it seems an odd instance of refreshing insight that the Swedish Academy (emphatically Occidental in literary sensibility, at least until 1968), chose Kawabata, one of the most scrupulously traditional of modern Japanese writers, the...