Book Review: "Dandelions" by Yasunari Kawabata

I love reading 20th century Japanese Literature. The books of Junichiro Tanazaki, Yukio Mishima and the beautiful commentary on extreme human conditions as written by Yasunari Kawabata are among some of the greatest books to grace the last one hundred years of literature. In the 21st century, Japanese Literature continues the tradition of accurately and beautifully putting into words what others have previously struggled with articulating. The works of Yoko Ogawa such as “Revenge” and “The Memory Police” have often analysed the feelings of national anxiety as channelled through one or a small set of characters. The works of Haruki Murakami have the Kafkan quality of despair raining over them whilst also managing to tell the most wonderful narratives through extended metaphors. But in this review, I would like to discuss the final work of the great Yasunari Kawabata. It is called “Dandelions” and it is one of the most beautiful and incredible books to ever be written in Japan.

About a young woman who is engaged to be married, she finds herself in a mental institution by the guidance of her mother. The reason for this is that she is losing sight of very particular things. First she loses sight of small things, but as it grows, the anxiety around her that she will lose sight of people seems to be overwhelming. Her fiancé wants to marry her and yet, the mother is hoping first for her daughter to get better. With the impoverished words of pining love by the fiancé completed with the desire to know more about her disorder by our main character, we start to see the social failings and injustices upon those who suffer with conditions. An underlying metaphor is the treatment of the disabled and the invisible illness of mental afflictions and I think that Yasunari Kawabata in this sense, was ahead of his time in investigating it. He had the guts to create a woman who was flawed and shunned by various people in which she could only rely on one or two other people. She could not even rely on her own mind as she believed it was playing against her and in favour of delaying her growth indefinitely.

The book itself is beautifully written. Each character has their own very poignant voice that, even if you were not told who was speaking at that particular time, you would probably be able to figure it out. The words of love, the pining of truth that the fiancé has is perfectly juxtaposed with the maternal anxiety that sometimes comes off as overbearing by the mother. This again is offset against the woman herself who is both anxious to know what is happening to her, but is also anxious to grow. Both of these, whilst she is in confinement, seem rather impossible to her and this impossibility comes through in her various acts of quiet resignation to the daily life of the institution.

I would heavily recommend this book not only because it is fairly short and you are dropped right in the middle of the narrative, but also because it is one of the most compelling accounts of mental illness in Japanese Literature. The different ideas that are explored through the worry of the other characters really leads the reader to believe that everyone has their own issues, though some are more serious than others. There is a definitely sense of separation between these characters through what they are experiencing, but it is ironically the girl who sits in the institution that keeps holding all of them together through the course of the novel.