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| | washingtonpost.com: Kawabata Country |
 | | A number of them are justly famous in Japan, but only one, "The Dancing Girl of Izu," has received wide circulation in translation, in a slightly shortened version by the great Edward Seidensticker, first published in the 1960s and available in a variety of editions over the years. |
 | | "The Dancing Girl," like many other stories included here, contain strong autobiographical elements, but these are used not for their own sake, as possible self-revelations, but as a means to suggest the difficulties of penetrating toward any kind of ultimate truth. |
 | | This conviction, so important to an understanding of Kawabata's basic artistic stance, is most clearly revealed in the second story, "Diary of My Sixteenth Year." The story contains three layers: the narrative itself, an afterword appended in 1925, and a second afterword attached still later. |
| www.washingtonpost.com /wp-srv/style/longterm/books/reviews/dancinggirlofizuandotherstories.htm (858 words) |
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