Kawabata Yasunari, the novelist, was born in Osaka in 1899. He lost one family member after another in his infancy and became an orphan by the age of 15.

While continuing dormitory life, he advanced to the First Higher School and Tokyo Imperial University. With his classmates he launched the 6th series of Shinshicho (New Currents of Thought) in 1921. The story "Shokonsai Ikkei," contributed to the second number, was recognized by Kikuchi Kan and marked his entry into the literary world.

He brought out the magazine "Bungei Jidai" (Literary Age) in 1924 with Yokomitsu Riichi, Kataoka Teppei and Kon Toko and became a representative novelist of the Shinkankaku (New sensibilities) school. By the early stages of the Showa period, he had become a central existence of the Shinko Geijutsuha (New Art school). He released a succession of masterpieces, among them, "Izu no Odoriko" (tr The Izu Dancer) "Yukiguni" (tr Snow Country), "Senba Zuru" (tr Thousand Cranes), "Yama no Oto" (tr The Sound of the Mountain), "Mizu Umi" (Lake) and "Koto" (Ancient Capital).

In 1968 he became the first Japanese to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. In addition to his creative activity, as the chairman of the Japan P.E.N. club, he organized the Tokyo meeting of the International P.E.N. club in 1957 and was nominated to the post of vice president of the world forum. His interests spread far and wide, and he was invited to join fellow Nobel laureate Yukawa Hideki on the Committee of Seven to Appeal for World Peace. He died in 1972 at the age of 72.

Kawabata lived in Jomyoji, Kamakura, from 1935; then from 1937, he made his home in Kambara Ariake’s house at Nikaido, until his move to Hase in 1946. He played an active role as a central figure of the Kamakura literati, helping to found the Kamakura Bunko lending library with Kume Masao and Takami Jun.