A Living Space Under the Sign of the Rhythms of Nature: Kyoto in The Old Capital by Kawabata Yasunari

Abstract

Yasunari Kawabata’s The Old Capital offers a profound meditation on the relationship between nature, tradition, and the human spirit. Set in Kyoto, the novel transforms the city into a symbolic and aesthetic landscape through which themes of impermanence, seasonal rhythm, and cultural identity are explored. The present study tries to emphasize the way in which, out of the desire to lament the loss of tradition, in his novel whose original title is Koto, Yasunari Kawabata creates an idealized image of the old imperial capital, giving it the value of a keeper of the most authentic values of the Japanese ethos as well as that of a symbol of aesthetic concepts such as mono no aware, the fleeting beauty, wabi sabi, the rustic, imperfect and desolate beauty, or ma, the beauty of the empty space, which were generated by a deep awareness of the transient beauty of nature. The vegetal element that perhaps best characterizes the Japanese identity always tried hard by the forces of nature occupies a central place in Kawabata's novel, encompassing its tradi-tional meanings as a symbol of renewal, but also that of the impermanence of beauty and fragility of life. By analysing key motifs such as seasonal festivals, natural imagery, and spatial motifs, this paper argues that tradition in The Old Capital is not portrayed as rigid or static. Rather, it emerges as a fluid and evolving presence, continuously reinterpreted through individual memory by the novel’s characters acting like true keepers of tradition. It also puts forward an interpretation that aligns with Rodica Frentiu’s analysis of Kawabata’s poetic sensibility, where nature, seasonality, and the aesthetics of impermanence become part of a lived experience rather than abstract symbolism.