Description
The Old Capital is of one of the three works for which Yasunari Kawabata won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Set in Kyoto — the old capital of Japan for a thousand years — this lyric novel traces the life of Chieko, the beloved adopted daughter of a kimono designer and his wife. Believing that she had been kidnapped by the couple as a baby, Chieko learns one day that she was instead a foundling, left abandoned on a doorstep. Happy with her adopted parents, however, her security and contentment remain undisturbed until an answered prayer at the famous Yasaka Shrine dramatically alters the course of her life.
