The Old Capital
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The Old Capital (translated from the Japanese Koto) is a novel by Yasunari Kawabata originally published in 1962. It was first translated into English in 1987 by J. Martin Holman. Holman's newly-revised edition of his translation is due to be published by Shoemaker and Hoard Press of Washington, DC in fall 2005.
Chieko Saga is the daughter of Takichiro and Shige, who operate a kimono wholesaling business in Kyoto. Now twenty, Chieko has known for years that she was a foundling adopted by Takichiro and Shige. Soon after a chance encounter at Yasaka shrine, Chieko learns of a twin sister Naeko who had remained with her natural parents in Kitayama working in the forest in a mountain village north of the city. The identical looks of Chieko and Naeko confuse Hideo, a traditional weaver. a potential suitor of Chieko. The novel, one of the last that Kawabata completed before his death, examines themes common to much of his literature--the gulf between the sexes and the anxiety its recognition brings, yearning for a pure, virginal ideal, the linking of nature and man, setting and character--notions for which The Old Capital offers even deeper resonance as it acknowledges and explores the necessarily ironic, and often seductive, relationship between innovation and tradition among the post-War artists of the old capital city of Kyoto, who confront disorienting changes in society and taste that they deplore even as they feel their attraction.
The Old Capital was one of only three novels cited by the Nobel Committee in awarding the 1968 Prize for Literature to Kawabata.