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...‘Beauty and Sadness’ by Kawabata, one of the main themes is the concept of family and the way in which family loyalty is defined, especially in relation to women. In Kawabata’s novel, there is a perceived dichotomy between the traditional Japanese family and the relationship between husband and wife, and the constructed family loyalties which arise when individuals engender equivalent loyalty in others.
In ‘Family’, the social and cultural background to the narrative is particularly relevant, as the story is set in the early twentieth century at a period when the reformist pressures on traditional Chinese values and practices was causing conflict and dissent between different generations.
At the time, younger people in particular were becoming strongly influenced by foreign attitudes and ideas, and undergoing some difficulty in reconciling these new cultural parameters with the traditional values in which they had been brought up. The family of the novel’s title, the Kaos, live in the accepted style of a rich Chinese...