The Zen Thoughts In The "Snow Country"of Kawabata Yasunari

Kawabata Yasunari,the first Japanese writer winning the Noble Prize,has hisunique artistic charm. His works contain not only vivid description of Japaneselife, but also deep “Zen” thoughts. He has been always trying to combine hiscomprehension of Zen in his literature creation. The Zen thoughts in his workscan’t be simply summarized as religion, but the result after absorbing thenutrition of Zen, adding his artistic processing and combining with Japanesetraditional literature. It is safe to say that Kawabata Yasunari, deeply impregnatedby Zen, engages in literature creation under the influence of Zen and furtherunderstands Zen through his literature creation.Snow Country is full of beauty of “Nihility”and understanding of vain life.Kawabata Yasunari believes that “Nihility”, the spiritual essence of everything inthe world and origin of life, means everything. He hopes to express the reality ofthe world through “Nihility”; to discover the eternality through life and death; tomake people feel that life is nothing but “Nihility”, but we have to struggle to livein “Nihility”.Life is “Nihility”, death is doom; life is changeable, death is eternal.Kawabata Yasunari leads reader to deeper thinking of universe and heart throughhis description of nature of death. In the end, Kawabata Yasunari completes the“Enlightenment” of Zen through the death of Happako, who gets renascencethrough “Nirvana”. In the heart of Simamuraor Kawabata Yasunari, Happakoisn’t dead but living in another way. Kawabata Yasunari shows us the beauty of“Decease” as well as the beauty of “Renascence” after “Decease”.