The Dancing Girl of Izu and Other Stories, Yasunari Kawabata

  

When I found this book on my Kindle, I think I was looking for something out of the ordinary. Japanese are pretty good at 'out of the ordinary,' so I thought I would give it a try. How it got onto my Kindle is a bit of a mystery. I don't recall when or why I added it. I know I added a six or so Japanese stories at some point. But I don't know why this one or any of those got selected, as the addition was made some time ago. A little bit of Wiki trivia: Yasunari Kawabata won the Nobel prize for literature. So, obviously, some important people like the writer enough to give him buckets filled with money.
   The book is rather short. "The Dancing Girl of Izu" is the only novella length story with the other stories being short.
   The settings are charming. The characters give a bit of a view into a foreign time and place. "The Dancing Girl of Tsu" is about a student who falls in love with a very young girl. She is a dancing girl. So, as the student and the entertainment group, containing the dancing girl he is interested in, are all going the same way, they decide to go together.
   Despite what I said about the girl being underage, the student isn't some kind of pedophile. He sees her, quite by accident, nude, and realizes that she is much younger than he had thought. While still secretly longing for her, he did not really pursue her any further. Though, he was quite shy and maybe his interest in her was obvious.
   There are a few funny quotes that show the Japanese attitude towards women. Women, at least from the perspective of the women themselves, are polluters. So, when they talk about bathing in a river, the women wait for the men to go first, or, as the woman says, "The water will get all cloudy if we put our hands in. You'd think it was too dirty after us women." I'm not completely sure why she says this. Another variation on this idea comes when they eat when the women invite the student to eat with them. The woman, I'm not sure which, says, "Won't you at least have a bite with us? It's not very appetizing now that we women have put in our chopsticks, but maybe this could be the makings of a funny story."
   The story ends when they part. I kind of regret that. I wish he had continued with the group, and the group was sad to see him go. It was a charming story.
   Most of the stories are semi-autobiographical. Partly fiction and partly true stories of Kawabata recalling his life. A few stories stand out in my memory. The first is the story about his grandfather's slow death. He has to help him in his last months of life. He cannot urinate. Eating is a problem for him. It must have been a very difficult time for a middle school boy. The other one is about a boy who is called on for many funerals. He goes through many personal funerals: his parents, his sister. And so he learns a certain behavior pattern at funerals, and for this reason, he is called upon by many families to attend the funerals of their relatives. Myself, I have been to just one.