A Mere Cover of Misfortune
With
loneliness permeating his writing, Yasunari Kawabata is noted as one
of Japan’s major novelists before the great wars (World Wars I and
II). Born in Osaka, Japan, in 1899, he lost his family early in his
childhood, a factor which very well could have influenced his bleak
and fragile writing style which mainly consisted of novels and his
well-known collection of short stories known as Palm
of the Hand Stories,
which are meant to be received as miniature pieces of artistic prose.
One such story, specifically “The Man Who Did Not Smile” (which
was written in 1929) illustrates the lonely and bleak fragility with
themes of nature and reverse psychology, the character’s (the
author’s) yearning for peace, and that though that the outer layer
of something may be beautiful, is a façade and what is underneath is
usually quite disappointing.
“The Man Who Did Not Smile,” is
the tale of an author whose story is being filmed. He rewrites the
ending to the story being filmed, and decides it would be a
“beautiful daydream” to wrap the reality of the “dark story”
in masks “appearing all over the screen” (129 Kawabata).
Eventually, he finds enough masks. However, when he visits his ill
wife in the hospital and she accommodates the requests of their
children to ‘try on’ the mask, he notices that after it was taken
away, it revealed the reality beneath and he perceived the “ugliness
of her own countenance for the first time” (132). The main
character attempts to remove the mask scene but discards the message,
illustrating that perhaps, with an ending where masks appear, he is
masking the likelihood that he may not have been able to create the
precise ending for the film.
In
the first half of the story, there is a focus not only the color
green, but also on nature, something especial to Kawabata. In
Japanese culture, the color green is symbolic for rest, renewal,
peace, and calm and is also associated with nature and fresh, growing
verdure (Madden). Kawabata uses these themes in a reverse way.
Although the green or celadon colored sky in the beginning relieves
him because he has rewritten the film’s ending scene, the green
dawn of morning itself is only a mask to the dark night, much like
the appearance of smiling masks at the film’s end is a mask to the
gloomy and obscure story.
Taking place in a ward of a mental
hospital, the film the main character in involved in is a picture of
imperfections which punctuate everyday life. The author does not
possess a name, nor does anyone else in the story. This lends the few
pages of “The Man Who Did Not Smile” an air of nondescript
anonymity and uncertainty. In the story, the main character wishes
for inner peace in the creation of a fitting ending to the film, but
he does not find it there, for it is much more difficult to find
masks than he had imagined. The wandering he and others do in search
of various masks could represent a seemingly endless searching for
some type of end or means that does not guarantee satisfaction. When
he mentions that he was overjoyed, had a pleasant sensation, and
could sleep soundly, it was only a façade; this peace over a
mediocre ending would not gratify his overall yearning for
harmony.
Though everything becomes more dim and hopeless to
Kawabata’s main character, he is able to rewrite the film ending
and include masks attempting to cloak the dreary story in grins.
However, outer layers are façades and whatever is underneath them
usually burns through like sulfuric acid through fibers. The masks
cannot cover the fact that what is underneath is imperfect because he
knows imperfection; his wife is deathly ill, deteriorating, and he
cannot stop the degradation of her health (Kawabata 131). To this
author, life is a span of time in which people hide behind masks to
cover their distress. Within this lifespan, art, even his art, is no
good; it is merely an expression of pain, it cannot conceal the
misfortune that occurs in life (132).
Kawabata’s work is
“sad, fagile, and unbalanced…far from presenting fumes
of prettiness, continuously
surprising and often intensely
unsettling; at their best, they are unequaled in portraying
the
psychic cost of aesthetic pleasure, the deadening of sympathy and
sense in minds
highly susceptibility” (Phillips).
Readers are drawn in, bitten, and left in a dream-like state
attempting to grasp meaning behind the prose. “The Man Who Did Not
Smile” is a writer’s piece that colors a painting of dawn.
However, with the struggle for peace amidst the knowledge that
nothing in creation, not even a smiling mask, possesses the ability
to cover the face of reality and misfortune, Kawabata prods readers
to ask the question if the piece he wrote was a picture of dawn, or
rather of the coming darkness. The character’s personality was
gloomy, and despite his efforts to brighten the ending, fate would
have none of it, for even gentle, smiling masks are a mere cover of
misfortune.
~//~
Works
Cited
Kawabata,
Yasunari. Palm-of-the-Hand
Stories. San Francisco: North Point,
1988. Print. Madden, Thomas J., Kelly Hewett, and Martin S. Roth.
“Managing Images in Different Cultures: A
Cross-
National Study of Color Meanings and Preferences.” Journal
of International Marketing 8.4
(2000): 90-107. EBSCO MegaFILE. Web.
26 Oct. 2014. Phillips, Brian. "The Tyranny of
Beauty: Kawabata." Hudson
Review 59.3 (2006):
419- 428. OmniFile Full Text
Select (H.W.
Wilson). Web. 26 Oct.
2014.
Notes: Writing about such dark hopelessness is often my greatest thankfulness cultivator. Joy and wholesomeness does not come without struggle and depth; Christ is our depth, and with Him we need wear no mask, for he sees the ugly and the beauty underneath. Nothing is hidden from His sight.
