Kawabata’s Beauty and Sadness and Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and

Kawabatas Beauty and Sadness and Murakamis Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World Although wildly different in subject matter and style, Kawabatas Beauty and Sadness and Murakamis Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World both show how Japan has been internationalized as well as how it has remained traditional. Kawabatas novel is traditional and acceptable, much like the haiku poetry he imitates, but has a thread of rebelliousness and modernity course through the web that binds the characters together. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is devastatingly modern, and yet has a similar but opposite undertone of old Japan, or at least(prenominal) a nostalgia for old Japan. In both novels a more international culture has taken root in Japan, and it seems that the characters both embrace and run from the implications of a globalized, hybridized culture. With the graceful starkness of traditional Japanese haiku, Kawabata reveals a twisted set of love affa irs between four people that ultimately lead to their downfalls. Haiku depicts a meditational view of the world where nothing is meaningless in Beauty and Sadness all of the relations represent aspects of new and old Japan, mirroring the rise and fall of Japanese culture in their movements. Among these relationships, perhaps the most traditional is found between Oki and Otoko although it is tragic and somewhat leacherous, the bond between a young woman (or girl) and an sr. man is an acceptable affair in traditional Japanese culture. They represent the oldest parts of Japanese custom, and adhere to that measure throughout the novel. Okis wish to memorize the temple bells with Otoko reflects this long established pattern of old man and young girl, as ... ...lly, however, he begins to fight back against this loss of identicalness and struggles to regain himself, realizing that steal memories was stealing time... forget the end of the world, I was ready to reclaim my whole self. (M urakami, 239) As he sits back in his car and waits for his world to end he gives himself the tools to fight this loss of identity, telling himself tNow I can reclaim all Id lost. Whats lost never perishes. (Murakami, 396) Although his identity has crumbled almost past recognition, the Narrator and the Dreamreader hold the key to retrieving it memories and the unrelenting search for identity. Even though the identity of the Japanese culture has been undermined by globalization and internationalization, Murakami believes that it provide be found again when the culture receives the proper stimulus when they begin to read the dreams of unicorns.