BR 88 – The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata: Aging and Family

The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata: Aging and Family

Shingo hears something in the mountain at night and wonders whether it signals his approaching death. At home, his family’s unhappiness is easier to explain. Finding a way to help proves much harder. 

1. Inside Shingo’s Troubled Household

In The Sound of the Mountain (1954; 山の音, Yama no Oto), Yasunari Kawabata (川端康成; 1899–1972) follows an aging father through the troubles of a postwar household. The novel appeared in installments from 1949 to 1954. Edward G. Seidensticker (1921–2007) translated it into English in 1970. 

The setting is postwar Kamakura, where Shingo Ogata lives within commuting distance of Tokyo. His days bring business, family worries and small pleasures. He notices distress readily enough. His difficulty lies in responding without protecting his own comfort or favoring the people he finds easiest to love.

2. Plot Summary: Trouble Beneath the Daily Routine

Shingo is in his early sixties and still works in Tokyo. He shares his home with his wife Yasuko as well as their son Shuichi and daughter-in-law Kikuko. Father and son also work at the same company. Their closeness leaves few opportunities to escape one another’s troubles.

Shuichi’s infidelity has made Kikuko unhappy. Shingo worries about her and welcomes the consideration she shows him. As his attachment deepens, concern about his son’s behavior becomes tangled with feelings he cannot comfortably acknowledge.

Fusako, his daughter, returns with her two children after her marriage breaks down. She brings practical needs and grievances that her father finds tiring. His fondness for Kikuko makes his less generous response to Fusako difficult to overlook.

Kikuko ends a pregnancy. Meanwhile Kinu, Shuichi’s mistress, is pregnant and resists pressure over what she should do. Neither woman follows the path the family wants for her. Shingo’s attempts to manage events expose how little he understands their wishes.

Visits and conversations continue without clearing away the unhappiness. The household finds ways to carry on although its relationships remain unsettled. Shingo’s concern never becomes a guarantee that he can put things right.

3. Shingo: A Sensitive Man with Blind Spots

A flower or an altered expression can hold Shingo’s attention. His curiosity survives the lapses of memory that increasingly frighten him. Following his thoughts lets readers feel how aging changes familiar places and everyday encounters.

His preferences also become visible. Kikuko receives patience and tenderness that he struggles to offer his daughter. Yasuko’s habits irritate him while memories of her dead sister retain their appeal. The remembered woman never has to endure the ordinary disappointments of growing old beside him.

Kikuko brings some of that earlier longing into his present life. His pleasure in her company includes gratitude, affection and desire. He can disapprove of Shuichi while remaining reluctant to examine what he himself wants from her.

This makes him a difficult person to judge quickly. His kindness sometimes helps. At other moments, it allows him to enjoy being needed while leaving the harder work to someone else.

4. Kikuko, Fusako and the Cost of Being Judged

Kikuko’s quiet attentiveness makes her welcome in the household. Shingo treasures it because she eases his anxieties. Yet her value cannot be measured by how gently she treats him. Her marriage and the choices it leaves her deserve attention in their own right.

Her abortion disrupts the family’s picture of a compliant daughter-in-law. It also challenges readers who have accepted Shingo’s admiration as a sufficient account of her. She has private limits that his affection does not allow him to define.

Fusako is harder for him to admire. She complains and asks for help after a failed marriage. Her anger becomes more understandable when we compare the welcome she receives with the warmth offered to Kikuko. Kinu also refuses an assigned role: her pregnancy gives her concerns that exceed the family’s judgment of her as a mistress.

Feminist literary theory helps frame the question running through these encounters: whose comfort matters most? The women must live with the consequences of decisions that men may discuss, regret or delay. Their actions reveal how much remains outside Shingo’s sympathetic account of himself.

5. Aging, Memory and Responsibility

Shingo’s fear of death grows through small disturbances. A familiar task becomes unexpectedly difficult or a name escapes him. News that someone has died changes how he measures his own remaining years.

These moments do not steadily make him wiser. He may recognize an unfair preference and soon return to it. Worrying about his children also prompts questions about his own failures as a father. Regret becomes useful only when it changes what he is willing to do for them.

The war belongs to this family history too. Shuichi’s military experience forms part of the background to his conduct. It complicates an account of the son’s unhappiness without removing his responsibility for how he treats other people.

6. The Mountain, the Garden and the Uncertain Dream

The mountain’s noise frightens Shingo because he hears a warning in it. Readers receive no confirmation that it predicts a death. The uncertainty matters: a sound whose source he cannot explain becomes inseparable from his private fears.

In the garden, seasonal growth offers pleasure as well as reminders of loss. This sensitivity has an affinity with mono no aware (物の哀れ), the tenderness and sorrow prompted by things that cannot last. A plant matters here because of what Shingo notices and remembers. It need not stand for one fixed idea.

Psychoanalytic criticism offers a way to consider the dreams that interrupt his nights. Forgotten attractions and current anxieties appear together, unsettling his waking explanations. The dreams invite interpretation while leaving room for uncertainty about what any single image means.

7. Silence, Perspective and Narrative Form

The narration follows Shingo closely enough for us to share his unease. We also begin to notice differences between what he thinks he offers and what others need. Narratology helps explain how this restricted viewpoint shapes a reader’s judgment: access to his thoughts gives us understanding without making his judgments authoritative.

Silence changes meaning from one conversation to another. Someone may hold back to preserve dignity, avoid an argument or conceal a decision. Kikuko’s restraint cannot safely be taken as approval. Much depends on what she does when the conversation ends.

Short episodes allow household routines to gather emotional weight. Memories enter the present and a seemingly ordinary exchange reveals a fresh strain. There is substantial action beneath this subdued manner, including infidelity, pregnancy and decisions about whether a relationship can continue.

Seidensticker’s translation asks readers to listen closely. A conversation can become painful through a slight change of emphasis. The prose leaves space for what the speaker cannot bring themselves to say.

8. The Limits of a Father’s Concern

Shingo’s mixture of tenderness and evasion gives the novel its particular force. He can see that someone is suffering and still respond unfairly. Readers have to assess his kindness through its effects as well as his intentions.

The viewpoint also demands care. Women initially reach us through his attraction, irritation or gratitude. Their choices can expose the limits of that portrait. Following those choices keeps the review of family life from becoming only an account of an older man’s feelings.

Some readers will find the pace frustrating. The family keeps discussing its troubles while little changes at home. That repetition feels true to this household, where people continue sharing meals and rooms long after the arrangements have become painful.

9. Kawabata’s Reading and Literary Parallels

Kawabata identified The Tale of Genji (c. 1008) by Murasaki Shikibu (紫式部; c. 978–c. 1014) as a treasured early reading experience. Its complicated households provide a useful context for this novel’s concern with affection, dependence and the harm people fail to recognize.

Swann’s Way (1913) by Marcel Proust (1871–1922) offers a comparison through memory and desire. In both books, someone remembered or imagined can become more compelling than the person encountered in daily life. This is a comparison between their concerns, not a claim that Proust supplied a model for Shingo.

10. The Choices Still Open to Shingo

Shingo has no way of knowing how many years remain to him. He can decide whether to listen more fairly to the people around him. The novel leaves that possibility open, asking us to notice the everyday occasions when concern could become help and the habits that prevent it.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What story does The Sound of the Mountain tell?

An aging father, Shingo Ogata, worries about his memory and his family. His son’s affair, his daughter’s broken marriage and his feelings for his daughter-in-law complicate his efforts to help.

Is Shingo retired?

He still commutes from Kamakura to work in Tokyo. His son Shuichi works at the same company, bringing their professional and family lives close together.

What does the mountain’s sound mean?

Shingo hears it as a warning of death. Its meaning remains uncertain, so readers can interpret it through his anxiety without accepting it as a supernatural prediction.

Does the ending resolve the family’s problems?

The household continues without a complete reconciliation. Several relationships remain troubled and Shingo’s concern cannot ensure a happier future for everyone.

References

1. Kawabata, Yasunari, The Sound of the Mountain, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker (New York: Vintage, 1996).

2. Gessel, Van C., Three Modern Novelists: Sōseki, Tanizaki, Kawabata (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1993).

3. Keene, Donald, Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era, vol. 1: Fiction (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984).

4. Keene, Donald, Five Modern Japanese Novelists (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).

5. Miyoshi, Masao, Accomplices of Silence: The Modern Japanese Novel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).

6. Petersen, Gwenn Boardman, The Moon in the Water: Understanding Tanizaki, Kawabata and Mishima (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1979).

7. Starrs, Roy, Soundings in Time: The Fictive Art of Kawabata Yasunari (Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library, 1998).

 

Last Revised and Updated: October 19, 2026