“In his last poem he offered nothing as a legacy. He but hoped that after his death nature would remain beautiful. That could be his bequest.”

— Yasunari Kawabata

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)
Context: Ryokan, who shook off the modern vulgarity of his day, who was immersed in the elegance of earlier centuries, and whose poetry and calligraphy are much admired in Japan today — he lived in the spirit of these poems, a wanderer down country paths, a grass hut for shelter, rags for clothes, farmers to talk to. The profundity of religion and literature was not, for him, in the abstruse. He rather pursued literature and belief in the benign spirit summarized in the Buddhist phrase "a smiling face and gentle words". In his last poem he offered nothing as a legacy. He but hoped that after his death nature would remain beautiful. That could be his bequest.

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Yasunari Kawabata 44

Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner 1899–1972

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