Immortality (1963) by Kawabata Yasunari Term Paper

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All is forgiven. Eventually, both of them disappear into one of the trees that the old man's ancestors have looked after, for hundreds of years.

Is the story emotionally positive or negative in tone? On one hand, the old man was a failure in life, and drove a woman to suicide. Yet in death, everything seems to be forgiven, and he returns to her and the spiritual resting place of his ancestors. Both her and his saving grace was that he remembered her. Misako says that so long as he lives on and remembers her, she is still alive. The author resists judging his characters, either the formerly suicidal girl or the deaf old man who betrayed her when he was young. It suggests that there is absolute forgiveness after death for everyone, and the dead live in a state of unity with the natural world. So long as a person is remembered, he or she is never really dies. This reflects the Shinto, Japanese need to remember one's ancestors and the dead.

The story is an introduction to the Japanese view of death, and the relationship of human beings to the natural world in Japanese religion.

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It provides a counterbalance to the Western, Christian notion of the life after death as a place of punishment and reward. Immortality comes through the memory of the living, not the immortality and judgment of the soul. The living, like the old man in life, and the golfers on the driving range, are preoccupied with worldly affairs, but these thoughts ebb away after death. The prompts the reader to reflect on the people he or she knows who have died, and how they remain unchanged in the memory. What would they think if they were to encounter life as it is lived in the here and now? It also infuses a contemporary, rather banal setting with transcendent significance in a way that makes the reader look at ordinary places, like a golf driving range, with new wonder….....

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