The Aesthetics of Linked-Verse Poetry in Yasunari Kawabata’s 'The Lake'
The distinctive narrative style exhibited in Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata’s literary works has frequently been associated with the traditional Japanese art of linked-verse poetry (renga). However, the precise compositional nature of these similarities has yet to be thoroughly explored. In this article, I examine two fundamental principles of linked-verse poetry, ‘linking’ (tsukeai) and ‘flow’ (yukiyō), and use these as analytical tools to explore the thematic and narrative structure for which Kawabata’s literary technique is renowned. Considering the first chapter of his 1954 novel The Lake (Mizuumi) as a case study, I identify notable correspondences between linked verse and Kawabata’s prose writing in the form of a qualitative mode of progression characterised by a rich use of sensory and emotive association, and a wave-like sense of rhythm between moments of heightened and reduced expressive and affective intensity. This article uses detailed textual analysis to demonstrate a structural basis for comparing Kawabata’s prose with linked verse, which in turn implies that Kawabata’s narrative style is shaped by conscious aesthetic decisions to draw on linked-verse principles.