Tanpopo (novel)

Tampopo

Author	Yasunari Kawabata
Original title	たんぽぽ
Translator	Michael Emmerich
Language	Japanese
Publication date	1964 (magazine) 1972 (novel)
Publication place	Japan

Tanpopo ("The Dandelion") is a Japanese novel by Yasunari Kawabata, written in 1964, but published only posthumously in 1972, left unfinished when the author died. ^[1] Kawabata had commenced serializing his final novel in the literary magazine Shincho, but after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in October 1968 he ceased all publishing activity. ^[2]

A French translation with the title Les pissenlits was published in 2012. ^[3] An English translation with an afterword by Michael Emmerich was published in 2017 by New Directions. ^[4]

Plot

Kizaki Ineko has been placed in asylum. Her illness, somagnosia, is a fictional illness is the inability to perceive or see the bodies of others. The condition, naturally, affects her ability to relate to others as well: the fellow asylum inmate who writes, calligraphically, “To enter the Buddha world is easy; to enter the world of demons is difficult,” is to her simply a floating brush, while her boyfriend, Kuno, is a specter.

Then plot turns on the blindness of the girl Inako (稲子), when making love to the boy Hisano (久野) and the conversations leading to the decision of the girl's mother to protect him from the girl, lest she harm him when she is blind. ^[5]

References

1. "DANDELIONS". Kirkus Reviews. 3 September 2017. Archived from the original on 17 February 2024. Retrieved 23 September 2025. Pensive last novel by Kawabata, unfinished at the time of the author's 1972 suicide but still capable of standing on its own.
2. Gian Carlo Calza Japan Style 2007 In 1964 he had begun to publish what would be his last novel, The Dandelion (Tampopo), in instalments in the literary magazine Shincho. When he was awarded the prize in October 1968 he stopped publishing and never started again....
3. Le Monde "Les Pissenlits (Tanpopo)", de Yasunari Kawabata: dialogue de la mère et de l'amant Cet ultime livre de Kawabata est également une mise en scène de la littérature. Inachevée ? Infinie.
4. Kawabata, Dandelions (New York: New Directions, 2017) ISBN   978-0-8112-2409-3
5. Shūichi Katō A History of Japanese Literature: The Modern Years 1983 p243 "The fairy like young girl of the short novel Tanpopo (Dandelion, posthumous) suffers from a strange affliction that means that in the extremes of physical love she becomes incapable of seeing her partner."