“Kawabata literature” manifests an obvious consciousness of death, which owes much to the author’s considerable experience of death in his psychology, the distinctive learning from nature, and Buddhist view of life and death. However, the death in “Kawabata literature” means neither a worldly feeling of sorrow and terror, nor an active sorrowful attitude to life, nor a nonextinctive spirit of universe. As a result, the death penned by Kawabana is both frightful and sorrowful and beautiful and magnificent.

Japanese literature; Kawabata Kona; consciousness of death