What happened October 1968 AD

On 16 October 1968, Kawabata was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first Japanese person to receive such a distinction. In awarding the prize "for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind", the Nobel Committee cited three of his novels, Snow Country, Thousand Cranes, and The Old Capital.

In October 1968, he was medically deferred and classified 1-Y (unqualified for duty except in the case of a national emergency).