Emotional Insecurity

In a 1934 published work Kawabata wrote: "I feel as though I have never held a woman's hand in a romantic sense... Am I a happy man deserving of pity?”.This does not have to be taken literally, but it does show the type of emotional insecurity that Kawabata felt, especially experiencing two painful love affairs at a young age. One of those painful love episodes was with Hatsuyo Ito.