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On June 14, 1899, Yasunari Kawabata was born in Osaka, Japan. He was orphaned at two and sent to live with his grandparents. After graduating from high school before his 18th birthday, he gained entrance to Tokyo Imperial University as an English major. He mainly wrote fiction stories, though he often found work as a reporter. The death of his immediate family at a young age and the cruelty of World War II had a significant influence on his body of work. On April 16, 1972, his official death was suicide by gas, though his family and friends believe it was an accident.
The Sound of the Mountain follows a year in the life of a man named Ogata Shingo. Along with his plain wife Yasuko, his son Shuichi lives there with his wife, Kikuko. Their family includes a daughter named Fusako. During the blank slate of his daily commute, he scrutinizes his family’s inner turmoil.
Shingo takes his secretary Eiko Tanizaki out dancing. Through their friendly conversations, Eiko confesses that Shuichi has a mistress. She’s somewhat friendly with the woman named Kinu. Shingo decides to investigate the war widow further but cannot bring himself to announce his presence at her door.
Shuichi is a terrible husband, and his numerous affairs are an open secret. The turmoil of being in a loveless marriage causes Kikuko to focus her attention on another subject. Shingo admits that he is emotionally dependent on his daughter-in-law for everything, and begins to see her in a sexual light.
He tries to talk some sense into Shuichi to care for Kikuko but his son’s reluctance is palpable. Kikuko and Shuichi become pregnant but obtain an abortion funded by Kinu. Kinu announces her own pregnancy after Shuichi breaks the affair off. She adamantly refuses to admit that Shuichi is the father of her child, claiming the father is another one of her lovers.
On New Year’s Eve, his homely daughter Fusako comes home with her two young daughters after leaving her husband, Aihara. The family received divorce papers from his side, but Shingo never felt compelled to return the completed paperwork.
The family learns from the newspaper that Fusako’s husband has failed to commit suicide with another woman. He had been quietly supporting Aihara’s paternal grandmother until the news of his son-in-law’s attempted suicide.
Fusako places the blame for the breakdown of her marriage solely on her father’s sagging shoulders. Shingo admits to himself he was not a great father to either of his children and feels that this behavior is reflected in the failure of their marriages.
As he is processing the trauma of his existence, he realizes that his life’s actions and inaction are coming out in the present and affecting the future. His memory is worsening in his old age and he clings to what he can. His thoughts become jumbled dreams that take on a more pronounced tone as the book unfolds.
The dreams reflect his cognizance of his first love which was Yasuko’s beautiful elder sister plus prophetic fantasies of old friends and associates. Shingo finds himself attending more funerals for school friends than in previous years. He wonders about his own eventual death. The passing of his friend, Toriyama, causes him to become the unlikely owner of a couple of No masks. He is drawn to the mask resembling a young woman.
These details are an integral part of Shingo’s evolution, drawing his mental state out on the page in a tangible, relatable way. These bits and pieces of his consciousness are the sound of the mountain to him. The novel ends right back in the Ogata home, with Fusako asking to open a shop with her parents’ help and Shingo announcing that he would like to visit the family’s country home.
The ending is reminiscent of Kawabata’s writing style, no bombastic endings, no grand finales, simply art for art’s sake. To me, the entire novel felt like a snapshot of the Ogata family that you would see in the family photo album. They went through these terrible, earth-shaking situations but time marches on. It’s time to think about the next step.
And their story ends right where it needs to before getting placed in the photo album for posterity. You can always go back and look at the pictures, recall the moments that lead you to capturing it, but you’re going to close the album again.
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