Yasunari Kawabata was the first Japanese person to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. His style combined elements of classic Japanese prose with modern psychological narrative and exploration of human sexuality. Deeply influenced by the culture of his homeland, his writings capture the vivid and melancholy beauty and spirituality of Japan, while his own experiences and studies contributed to his assay into emotion.
Kawabata was born on June 11, 1899 in Osaka, Japan into a prosperous family; his father was a very distinguished physician. However, he was orphaned at the age of 2, his father dying of tuberculosis. The tragedies continued: his grandmother died when he was seven, his only sister died when he was ten, and his grandfather when he was 14. Kawabata would go on to describe himself as a man "without home or family". It is believed that these early traumas helped shape the background for the sense of loss and loneliness that runs throughout much of his writing.
After the death of his grandfather in 1915, Kawabata moved into a junior high dormitory (comparable to a modern day high school). He graduated from the school in 1917 and got into the Dai-ichi Koto-gakko' (Number One High School) in the same year. He finished high school in 1920 and was accepted to the then Tokyo Imperial University as an English major. At the university, he began to study Japanese literature and the Zen philosophy in depth, admiring the works of poets such as priests Dogen (1200-1253) and Myoe (1173-1232). Their poems had a deeply meditative quality, mostly descriptive of natural scenes such as a winter's moon or the silhouette of a mountain. Kawabata's imagery in later works would mirror these poets with surrealistic techniques.
While attending the university Kawabata re-established the literary magazine, "Shin-shichō", (New Tide of Thought), which had been non-operational for over four years. There he published his first short story, "Shokonsai Ikkei" ("A Scene from a Séance"). He later wrote a graduation thesis entitled "A Short History of Japanese Novels", a show of his patriotism. He graduated from the university in March 1924. In October of 1924 he, Kataoka Teppei, Yokomitsu Riichi and a number of other young writers started a new literary journal entitled Bungei Jidai (The Artistic Age). This journal was a reaction to the old school of Japanese literature, specifically the Naturalist school, while at the same time it stood in opposition to "worker's literature" or Socialist/ Communist schools.
On December 10, 1950, in Stockholm, Sweden, one of the greatest literary minds of the twentieth century, William Faulkner, presented his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. If one reads in between the lines of this acceptance speech, they can detect a certain message – more of a cry or plead – aimed directly to adolescent authors and writers, and that message is to be the voice of your own generation; write about things with true importance. This also means that authors should include heart, soul, spirit, and raw, truthful emotion into their writing. “Love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice” (Faulkner) should all be frequently embraced – it is the duty of authors to do so. If these young and adolescent authors ignore this message and duty, the already endangered state of literature will continue to diminish until its unfortunate extinction.
Kauikeaouli was born on August 11, 1813 on the Big Island of Hawaii. He became king at age 11 when his older brother Liholiho died, who ruled as Kamehameha II. For 14 years of his reign Kauikeaouli was guided by Kaahumanu and Kinau. At age 25, he took on the responsibilities of kingship by himself as Kamehameha III. (The Reign of Kamehameha III Website) Kauikeaouli’s reign of thirty years was filled with change and accomplishment. Kamehameha III’s reign would be a desirable time to live in because of the small population, religious freedom, and the equality for all Hawaiians.
When he was fifteen years old his mother died from appendicitis. From fifteen years of age to his college years he lived in an all-white neighborhood. From 1914-1917, he shifted from many colleges and academic courses of study as well as he changed his cultural identity growing up. He studied physical education, agriculture, and literature at a total of six colleges and universities from Wisconsin to New York. Although he never completed a degree, his educational pursuits laid the foundation for his writing career. He had the knowledge of philosophy and psychology. He attempted to write when he was a youth, but he made a choice to pursue a literary career in 1919. After he published Cane he became part of New York literary circles. He objected both rivalries that prevailed in the fraternity of writers and to attempts to promote him as a black writer (Clay...
Peoples’ personal life experiences usually affect the topic of their work. John Keats was a famous poet who grew up in an idyllic life until tragedy continuously stroked until his death at twenty-five years old. At eight years old, his father died in a tragic riding accident. Six years later, his mother died of tuberculosis (TB). In the midst of his troubles, his teacher strongly encouraged his reading and literacy ambitions. Living next to an insane asylum, Keats eventually started to develop physical and emotional problems. Diagnosed with TB, Keats helplessly watched his beloved brother die from the final stages of the same disease. Furthermore, he was unable to marry his fiancée, Fanny Brawne. Drawing from his individual experiences, Keats wrote very vividly about the pains and suffering he was going through. He expressed his unfulfillment as a writer, his love and struggles, the fleetingness of life and happiness, and his inner conflicts. Jack Stillinger writes, “It is this combined experience of suffering, death, and love all at once, against a background of serious conversation, reading, and thinking, that accounts for Keats's sudden rise to excellence in his poetry” (qtd. in Everett). All of Keats’s life experiences combined to make works of arts that could only be inspired by individual human experiences. John Keats’s background directly affects the topic of his works in order to realistically articulate his feelings in poetic form.
Joe Hisaishi was born on December 6, 1950 in Nagano, Japan under the name Mamoru Fujisawa. His musical training started early on, when he began to take violin lessons at age five. It was around this time that he first discovered his passion for music. Fujisawa truly began to explore this passion in the 70’s, during which, a cultural menagerie of Japanese popular music, new-age, and early electronic music flourished. Inevitably, those genres influenced Fujisawa's early compositions. (Wikipedia) Fujisawa was highly influenced by the new-wave of Japanese electronica such as the Yellow Magic Orchestra and Ryuichi Sakamoto group. It was not until 1975, that he made his first public performance, and it is not until a decade later that he dawns his stage name, Joe Hisaishi, on his first solo album Alpha Bet City. (Dasnoy & Tsong, 2013) Hisaishi developed his name from the American artist, Quincy Jones. The kanji for "Hisaishi" is read similarly to the Japanese pronunciation of "Quincy," and "Joe," came from "Jones."(IMDB)
Over the course of Japanese history, arguably, no artist is more famous for their works than Katsushika Hokusai. During his 88 years of life, he produced over 30,000 pieces of artwork, and heavily influenced Western styles of art. His most famous piece was created around 1831, a Japanese styled piece titled, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. This piece has stood as a defining piece of artwork in the Japanese culture for over 180 years, analyzed by students and authors for the interpretations filling the paper. The relationship between Hokusai’s painting has directly affected the Western point of view of Japanese style. The English author, Herbert Read’s novel interprets the painting distinctly differently from a Japanese point, American poet,
The Heian period(794-1185), the so-called golden age of Japanese culture, produced some of the finest works of Japanese literature.1 The most well known work from this period, the Genji Monogatari, is considered to be the “oldest novel still recognized today as a major masterpiece.”2 It can also be said that the Genji Monogatari is proof of the ingenuity of the Japanese in assimilating Chinese culture and politics. As a monogatari, a style of narrative with poems interspersed within it, the characters and settings frequently allude to Chinese poems and stories. In addition to displaying the poetic prowess that the Japanese had attained by this time period, the Genji Monogatari also demonstrates how politics and gender ideals were adopted from the Chinese.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Kahn” is an example of imaginative poetry due to an opium addiction. This poem creates its own kingdom and paradise while Colridge expresses his ideas of Heaven and Hell through his own drug induced thoughts and opinions.
Michael S. Gazzaniga was born in December 12, 1939 in Los Angeles, California. He got his B.A at Dartmouth College in 1961. As well as, he received his PHD. in Psycho-biology at California Institute of Technology. He worked under the guidance of Roger Sperry. Also, he conducts a research on a brain, which it makes people understand how does the brain work. In spite of, that he was under the guidance, he had a primary responsibility for the Split-brain research. It allows him to make some remarkable advances by examining patients and non-patients brain. Also, by using different methods to prove his point. For example, to clarify the hemisphere functions in the two brains that each have, he used right-handed and left-handed people. So, we can
Keene, Donald. Anthology of Japanese literature, from the earliest era to the mid-nineteenth century. New York: Grove P, 1955.
William Butler Yeats, born in 1865, is regarded as one of the pioneers of poetry in the 1900s. He is most well-remembered for his work focusing on the myths, folklore and history of Ireland, his home nation, but his other pieces have also found their way into the hearts of people around the world past and present. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to English and Irish literature. Along with Ezra Pound and T.S. Elliot, he is one of the most famous canonical Modernist poets: a genre of literature characterized by the use of free verse, concision, and a more musical sound to their writings (Surette).
Kafka was born in Prague, Czech Republic on July 3, 1883. He grew up in a wealthier Jewish middle class family, with three younger sisters. Kafka was the oldest, sadly his two younger brothers died during infancy, and his sisters later died in either a Nazi death camp or in a Polish ghetto. Kafka was not as close to his mother and father either. His mother did not fully grasp Kafka’s desire to become an author, and his father wasn’t much better. To Kafka, in the long run, his relationship
Miyamoto Musashi was born in 1584, in a Japan struggling to recover from more than four centuries of internal strife. The traditional rule of the emperors had been overthrown in the twelfth century, and although each successive emperor remained the figurehead of Japan, his powers were very much reduced. Since that time, Japan had seen almost continuous civil war between the provincial lords, warrior monks and brigands, all fighting each other for land and power. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the lords, called daimyo, built huge stone castles to protect themselves and their lords and castle towns outside the walls began to grow up. These wars naturally restricted the growth of trade and impoverished the whole country.
Written six hundred and fifty years apart from each other, Matsuo Basho’s Oku no Hosomichi and Ki no Tsurayuki’s Tosa Nikki are both examples of nikki bungaku or “diary literature.” Both of these travel diaries reflect the ideas and values of their respective time periods.