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Table of Contents

    1. Author

    2. Historical Background

    3. Story Analysis/ Plot Summery

    4. Charactor Analysis

Yasunari Kawabata

- Born in 1899 in Osaka

-Yasunari Kawabata was born into a prosperous family, then he lost everything after his whole family died.

- Parents died young. raised by his grandfather

- attended public school in Japan

- 1920-1924 attended Tokyo Imperial University

- one of the founders of Bungei Jidai, a Japanese literature movement

- Publish his first work, Izu dancer, in 1927

- became a part of the Art Academy of Japan in 1953 and four years later he was appointed chairman of the P.E.N. Club of Japan

- recieved the Goethe-medal in Frankfurt in 1959

- in 1968the first Japanese man to win a nobel prize for literature

- died in 1972 of a suicide

-Themes of loneliness, death and unobtainable love are seen throughout all of his work.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/kawabata.htm

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1968/kawabata-bio.html

The Jay: Historical Background

- set in 1940s Japan

- father finds a husband for his daughter

- marriage was meant to satisfy the family, not the person

- from the 1920s on, arranged marriages have slowly been on the decline

- today young people and their families meet the groom, but young people are not forced to marry

 -The story "The Jay" involves the announcement of an arranged marriage which is apart of Japanese culture

Literature Book

The Jay: The Story

- The Jay is about a girl named Yoshiko who lives with her grandmother.  She is eventually left by both her parents.  Early on by her mother, when she was very young, and later by her father, who grew tired of caring for her and moved in with her step mother. It is stated that her mother left because her father disliked her flashy clothing and her moneyspending ways. She dreams of marriage and although she is arranged to be married, finds it difficult to leave her grandmother by herself.  An immediate respect as well as awe and disbelief towards her grandmother combine when she tells her about the Jay bird outside the window.  She reveals the secrets of her squawking and sees what Yoshiko does not, even though she is blind.

Literature Notes and Book

FROM ZE BOOK.   

By: Sam, John, and Michael

Characters

Yoshiko: Her mother left when she was four. Yoshiko is faced with several conflicts within the story. Yoshiko wants to meet the mother that she never knew, but at the same time she does not want to upset her father. Yoshiko is also upset that her brother has already met their mother.

Grandmother: The grandmother is the person that Yoshiko looks up to. As a result, Yoshiko feels like she has to take care of her grandmother.  The grandmother does not have good sight, but she can see the world more clearly than anyone else can.

Brother: The brother helps establish one of the conflicts. Yoshiko also feels like she needs to take care of him.

Real Mother: She left Yoshiko and her brother a long time ago. She is one of the main sources of conflict within the story.

Father: The father raised his two children without their real mother. He knew that this would be best for them.

Jay: The Jay is a symbol, and it also represents the theme. The Jay was lost, and then something, or rather someone, came along and caused it to be found.

Literature Book

Memorable Quote

This nearly blind grandmother, simply from having heard the Jay’s voice, spoke as if she had seen everything. Yoshiko was filled with wonder.

           -I think that this quote has a symbolic meaning. Yoshiko says that her grandmother is blind, but she can see better than her. These two things seem like they are contradicting each other, but I think that it means that sometimes the meaning of something is more important than what we actually see. The grandmother understands the true meaning behind the situation, she does not actually have to see it.

 Literature Book