MARA MILLER “A Matter of Life and Death”: Kawabata on the Value of Art after the Atomic Bombings abstract This article explores the possible interpretations—and the implications of those interpretations—of a comment about the importance of art made by Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972), later the first Japanese Nobel laureate for literature: that “looking at old works of art is a matter of life and death.” (In 1949, Kawabata visited Hiroshima in his capacity as president of the Japan literary society P.E.N. to inspect the damage caused by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima that helped end World War II. On his way back to his home in Kamakura, he stopped in Kyoto. He came under severe criticism for “sightseeing” at such a time. This comment was his response.) The introduction explains why we should take him seriously as a commentator on art. The body of the article examines why our lookingat art might be more, not less, important after the post-War situation, the kinds of art Kawabata might have meant, why some possibilities are more likely than others, and how they differ in what they offer us and the value of art under conditions of trauma and mass trauma. Shortly after the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, in 1949, Yasunari Kawabata (1899– 1972), later the first Japanese Nobel laureate for literature (1968), visited Hiroshima with twenty or so other writers and journalists from the Japan literary society P.E.N. in his capacity as P.E.N.’s president. 1 On his way back to his home in Ka- makura, he stopped in Kyoto for two weeks of “sightseeing” (Donald Keene’s term), “to see Ky- oto scenery and old works of art” (Ky ¯ oto no f ¯ uk¯ o to kobijutsu to o mi-arukimashita), which brought harsh criticism in the press. He describes the inci- dent in his literary memoir. 2 As Keene tells it: Kawabata seemed impassive before the terrible sights, and this impression of serene tranquility with respect to everything except his own internal problems was con- firmed in the eyes of unfriendly observers when Kawa- bata spent time sightseeing in Kyoto on [his] return. Kawabata later explained his motivation in these terms: “I wondered if I was not guilty of a contradiction in hav- ing gone to see the sights and the old art of the ancient capital on my way back from the dreadful ruins left by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. But I cannot think there was any contradiction involved.... Perhaps Hiroshima and Kyoto are the two extremes of Japan today. I have been examining two such disparate sights at the same time and would like to examine them even more care- fully. It goes without saying that looking at old objects of art is not a hobby or a diversion. It is a matter of life and death” [sekkan na seimei de aru]. 3 This surprising statement prompts a number of questions, particularly to those of us like Kawa- bata’s critics, whether in the West or in Japan, whose thinking about art and the aesthetic has been primarily shaped by Plato, Kant, and Marx— from whose viewpoints Kawabata’s statement may seem preposterous. In the West, where “art” is generally considered an avocation or a preoc- cupation solely for the educated or sophisticated elite, it may seem unthinkable. Such attitudes spread to Japan during the Meiji period (1868– 1912) with the study of Western aesthetics and phi- losophy of art; Kawabata’s critics, therefore, saw Kawabata’s stop in Kyoto as frivolous, superficial, solipsistic, and selfish and argued that it showed Kawabata as indifferent, cold, even inhuman. 4 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 72:3 Summer 2014 C  2014 The American Society for Aesthetics