One Arm

"One Arm"
Author	Yasunari Kawabata
Original title	"片腕 "Kataude""
Translator	E. Seidensticker (1967)
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Genre(s)	Magic realism
Media type	Print
Publication date	1964
Published in English	1967

One Arm (かたうで, kataude) is a 1964 short story by the Japanese writer and Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata. It was first translated into English by Edward Seidensticker and published as "One Arm" in Japan Quarterly in 1967. This short story has been considered as a main example of the current of magic realism in Japanese Literature.

Plot

A young woman removes her right arm and gives it to the a man (the protagonist) to keep for the night. The story follows his thoughts and actions as he takes it home to keep for the night. He talks and caresses it, and then decides to replace his own arm with it. The "relationship" the man has with the detached arm serves as a portal into the landscape of memory and emotions.

References

Works by Yasunari Kawabata

Works

Novels	The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa (1930) Snow Country (1935–1937), (1947) The Master of Go (1951–1954) Thousand Cranes (1949–1952) The Sound of the Mountain (1949–1954) The Lake (1954) The House of the Sleeping Beauties (1961) The Old Capital (1962) Beauty and Sadness (1964)

Short stories	"The Dancing Girl of Izu" (1926) One Arm (1964) Palm-of-the-Hand Stories

Notable
adaptations

Sound of the Mountain (1954)
The Dancing Girl of Izu (1954)
Snow Country (1957)
Twin Sisters of Kyoto (1963)
With Beauty and Sorrow (1965)
Woman of the Lake (1966)
The Dancing Girl of Izu (1974)
Koto (1980)
Sleeping Beauty (2011)

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