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In this short story, “The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket” written by Yasunari Kawabata found in the Palm of the Hand Stories by Lane Dunlop and J. Martin Holman, is told through the eyes of a narrator. Taking place on the slopes of Japan, the narrator watches as children engage on an insect chase at the base of an embankment. Each child with a home made lantern in hand, unique with different colored paper stretched over the sides, and old-fashioned patterns so that from distance you just see a “bobbing cluster of beautiful varicolored lanterns.” Kawabatta goes on about this insect chase as an outsider looking in on these children in a simple yet captivating way that pulls you in yourself. She makes a seemingly insignificant moment like the exchanging on an insect and the way light happens to hit something seem so important. In the end, when the story turns to the thoughts of wisdom of the narrator you learn that this story is not just about a childish insect chase, but how it is a metaphor for something much greater in life. As the narrator seems to speak from experience imparting wisdom we learn about love and hope. That “even is you have the wit to look by yourself in a bush away from the other children, there are not many bell crickets in the world.” And grasshoppers may seem like bell crickets and bell crickets may seem like grasshoppers. However, this story is also about hope, which “should the day come, when it seems to you that the world is full of grasshoppers.” Remember the moments when your beautiful lantern on a girl’s chest writes your name. Much like Chekhov’s, “The Kiss” it is a short story about a moment so ordinary yet can change you forever. And like Bob Marley’s famous Redemption song about “emancipating yourself form mental slavery”, sung with just his voice and an acoustic guitar, this story is simple but you will catch you off guard with a deeper meaning. BS

Kawabata’s use of colorful imagery provides a delightful reading experience for those of us who enjoy romantic literature. He considered the collection, Tales to Hold in the Palm of Your Hand, to be "miniature works of art".(Nextext) Let us explore Kawabata’s use of such ingenious romantic symbolism within, "The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket", as he searches for love, beauty, and harmony.

In summary, this story tells a tale, of a university student walking along, when he hears the voice of an insect. Enjoying the song of the insect, he happens upon a group of children with beautiful lanterns out searching for insects. While the children are hunting insects, a boy finds a ‘grasshopper’, and continues to ask if anyone would like a ‘grasshopper’, until the voice of a certain girl exclaims that, "Yes", she wants the grasshopper. Carefully the boy captures the insect and releases it to the girl. Surprisingly, the ‘grasshopper’ is actually a much sought after ‘bell cricket’. This new discovery delights the little girl, and then the narrator realizes that the little boy must have known all along that he had found a ‘bell cricket’, and was saving it for that particular girl.

Consider that Kawabata placed himself as the mysterious narrator of this short story. Knowing that he grieved from a lonely existence longing to be loved, one can see how he wished himself across the threshold of youth, as seen in the first paragraph, when the narrator peers "Behind the white board fence..." Also, he is symbolizing the children and all their splendor as he watches them, making reference in the second paragraph, to the "…bobbing cluster of beautiful varicolored lanterns, such as one might see at a festival in a remote country village." He seems to continue with this fascination of innocence in the last sentence of the second paragraph, "The bobbing lanterns, the coming together of children on this lonely slope—surely it was a scene from a fairy tale?".

The infatuations of youth are often fleeting. The third paragraph notes, "The child with the red lantern discarded it as a tasteless object that could be bought at a store. The child who had made his own lantern threw it away because the design was too simple. The pattern of light that one had had in hand he night before was unsatisfactory the morning after. Each day… the children made new lanterns out of their hearts and minds." Here, one can see that Kawabata, placing himself as the narrator, longs for the loftiness of youthful romance, where the heart longs today for one, that tomorrow it will crush.

The narrator again is giving us a glimpse of dual meanings in the fourth paragraph, "…the candle’s light seemed to emanate from the form and color of the design itself." Here Kawabata is hinting that as each lantern is different, each child is different, and the light of the lantern is reflective of a child’s life-light. This is an example of Kawabata’s search for beauty in his writing. Certainly there can be no more beautiful light in the world than that of a child.

Paragraph fifteen depicts the little girl, reaching for the ‘grasshopper’, as the little boy is giving her the prize, and delightful surprise since the ‘grasshopper’ is actually a ‘bell cricket’. Kawabata writes, "She…enclosed the boy’s fist with both hands. The boy quietly opened his fist." Clearly here, the little girl is taking the little boy’s heart into her hands, and further more, he is trusting her with it. How beautifully romantic! The imagery and symbolism of this story are intoxicating. No wonder the narrator is transfixed, watching with anticipation and a wistful reflection.

Geoffrey O’Brien, a freelance writer for the New York Times, critiqued Kawabata’s enchanting story in a much different light. He believes that the children are being spied on by a sexually stimulated university student. He writes, "…by a university student who feels a sudden tremor of sexual jealousy – adds an element of voyeuristic anguish that will hardly surprise those who have read Kawabata’s "House of Sleeping Beauties."".

In the final paragraphs of the story, an interesting event occurs to remind us again that the point of the story is simple romance. "Fujio", the little boy’s name, has fallen as a greenish light from his lantern, onto the breast of Kiyoko, the little girl he has given the bell cricket to. Simultaneously, Kiyoko’s name is reflected in red from her lantern, onto Fujio’s waist. In this instance the narrator reflects how neither of the children seem to notice this little miracle of creating a memory that has inscribed itself onto each of them. Much like memories, when the moments are being made, we rarely realize their importance until years later, when experience teaches us better.

In the final paragraphs of the story, an interesting event occurs to remind us again that the point of the story is simple romance. "Fujio", the little boy’s name, has fallen as a greenish light from his lantern, onto the breast of Kiyoko, the little girl he has given the bell cricket to. Simultaneously, Kiyoko’s name is reflected in red from her lantern, onto Fujio’s waist. In this instance the narrator reflects how neither of the children seem to notice this little miracle of creating a memory that has inscribed itself onto each of them. Much like memories, when the moments are being made, we rarely realize their importance until years later, when experience teaches us better.

Lastly, as one reads the final three paragraphs of the story, ‘Kawabata’ as the narrator, is reflecting on how love should be cherished and delighted in, "Fujio! Even when you have become a young man, laugh with pleasure at a girl’s delight when, told that it’s a grasshopper, she is given a bell cricket; laugh with affection at a girl’s chagrin when, told that it’s a bell cricket, she is given a grasshopper." He also seems to be reflecting about his own experiences, as in the final paragraph he anonymously and silently encourages Fujio to look deeper than the surface, to not let the assumption that one seemingly unattractive, will not be a much loved ‘bell cricket’.

Janet Jurgella writes that this story, "…looks at the elements of nature and true beauty through the eyes of a quietly observant narrator." She also writes that Kawabata’s "zoom in on nature", reinforces Kawabata’s tale of an epiphany.(18) This "zooming in" is consistent with the traditional Japanese literary style, which emphasizes an observation of beauty and nature. This seems to reinforce the idea that Kawabata is able to so closely examine the elements of the story, because he has imposed himself here as the narrator. Therefore, he gives us clear and concise pictures of what he is seeing through the eyes of the narrator. Through this story, Kawabata provokes that element of simple and natural beauty; in the innocence of youth and its fleeting yet treasurable romances; he finds love in harmony.

Enjoyable as this story is, it is sad to know that Kawabata lived most of his life alone, without true love, trusting few with his own special ‘bell cricket’. True fortune abandoned him as a child, leaving him a lonely orphan. Consequently, his life’s work seems to be his legacy. He leaves us with many stories, books, and plays. Much of his literature are based on lonely men, seeking comfort in the beauty and the goodness of women.(Xiong) Perhaps, in some way, he continued to search for that perfect, unyielding, unchanging, dependable safety of a mother’s love.

In old age and bad health, after having lost his old and dear friend Yukio Mishima, to suicide in 1970, Yasunari Kawabata committed suicide himself in 1972. Gassing himself to death in his studio in Zushi, he left no note.(Keene) Possibly, Kawabata had no one left, of whom to say goodbye. The lonely orphaned child, and the lonely old man, died alone.

The last paragraph, I believe, is the most striking in this story.

I'm sure many of us have had more than our share of grasshoppers. I have. It can make you cynical sometimes, and make you think that all the people out there are grasshoppers. Let's hope that we find the right bell crickets.

vSmall things aren't always unfriendly. They are often in league with the poor, the working class, the economically and socially powerless. Children notice them because they haven't yet learned not to notice them. Small things can trigger the imagination, lending them special powers. They can provide means of escape, of discovery, of gaining prestige in the eyes of other children. They offer themselves as (relatively) safe companions. In his story "The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket," Yasunari Kawabata conveys a child's values through both repetition and detail:

"Oh! It's not a grasshopper. It's a bell cricket." The girl's eyes shone as she looked at the small brown insect.
"It's a bell cricket! It's a bell cricket!" The children echoed in an envious chorus.
"It's a bell cricket. It's a bell cricket."

By readjusting our own (possibly) jaded values, Kawabata makes us resee familiar things, revealing their inherent drama. He makes them glow with an inner light-the light of potentiality, their power to influence people and events. They illuminate their own being as well as the things around them. A cricket is dramatic because the children believe it is; their belief-and the author's-is what grants it narrative force. A small thing overcomes fiction's creaky resistance to quiet, seemingly unremarkable moments.

(http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/kawabata.htm)- but the kids can if you don't guide them carefully. He . . . is . . . a . . . master storyteller. The problem is that we westerners like action and strong plot development. His stories are more like a nature painting in twelve parts: carefully crafted, and deceitfully simple. I used The Sound of the Mountain with some of my students two years ago, and because they were in a small group of four, they were able to understand. Even so, it did take them a few chapters to understand because his stuff is so drastically different from what we're used to seeing in an American literature class. He also has some great short stories: "The fifty-sen piece" (Might be twenty sen- sorry, we're using new texts this year), and "The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket" (which is a terrific introduction to his themes of nature, innocence, and lack of action).
Korea . . . sorry, we didn't study Korea in my class. Wish I could help.

In Yasunari Kawata’s story, “The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket,” our adult narrator follows a group of children out capturing insects. (“Each day, with cardboard, paper, brush, scissors, pen-knife and glue, the children made new lanterns out of their hearts and minds.”) A boy, offering what he thinks is a grasshopper to a girl, stands close to her. Our narrator witnesses what they do not: “The boy’s lantern, which he held up alongside the girl’s insect cage, inscribed his name, cut out in the green papered aperture, onto her white cotton kimono. The girl’s lantern, which dangled loosely from her wrist, did not project its pattern so clearly, but still one could make out, in a trembling patch of red on the boy’s waist, the name ‘Kiyoko.’”

When I read these words, when I was caught in this moment, I cried. This was even before the narrator infuses what he’s seen into a crushing meditation; I think it was simply the way he looked on, in and out of the world he described (“Wide-eyed, I loitered near them.”), and the straight wonder of his description. This was just the other day; I was on an airplane, flying between Salt Lake City and Portland. Tears running down my face, I was overcome.

Bell Cricket

Bell cricket is the top singer on an autumn night. It has a powerful and prolonged sound of "lriinggg...lrriingggg..." as if a pearl rolls over on a silver tray. Most of grasshoppers' chirping is rather simple and monotonous, but bell cricket chirping is almost as good as that of birds. It raises the body up and down to mame a sound, and each movement makes a sound of 'liing' 'liing'.

The chirp of a bell cricket is clear and loud. Its beautifully decorated golden wings vibrate to produce a ringing of an alarm bell. The chirp impresses the people so much that people feel as if they are looking for an ancient treasure. Vibration of the golden wings is in perfect harmony with a clear note of its chirp. There are lots of grasshoppers making wonderful sounds in chorus in woods in autumn. Bell cricket begins to sing and everyone joins in. Bell cricket belongs to Velarifictorus aspersus of Orthoptera.

Its body is 1.6 to 1.8 cm long and dark brown or blackish brown. It has yellowish brown feelers. It lives on wet grasses or areas adjacent to marshland in Korea and China as well as Russia. It chirps late at night in the grass during August and throughout autumn months.