Kawabata Yasunari

Kawabata Yasunari (川端 康成, 14 June 1899 – 16 April 1972) was a Japanese novelist whose spare, lyrical and subtly shaded prose won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. He became the first Japanese, and third Asian (after Rabindranath Tagore and Shmuel Yosef Agnon), to win the award. His works have had broad and lasting appeal, and are still widely read internationally.

Kawabata was an amateur Go player and a Go reporter. Wrote Meijin (名人, translated as The Master of Go) about the Shusai retirement game. Kawabata considered it to be his finest work, but it is atypical of his writing.

Kawabata's name is ordered in the Western order (Yasunari Kawabata) in the English-language version of the book. He later published a long interview with Go Seigen (Go Seigen Kidan 呉清源棋談, 1954).

He died from gassing, possibly at his own hands in 1972 and left no note.

Kawabata was inducted to the Nihon Kiin Hall of Fame in 2022, 50 years after his death.