The significance of Kawabata's Thousand Cranes

Yasunari Kawabata's novel Thousand Cranes was published (in Japan) over a span of 3 years, 1949-52. It is the most deliberately old-fashioned novel I have ever read. The point of view seems to be that women exist in an entirely subservient role - the main function of the women in this novel is to preside over the ritualized process of Japanese tea service and to serve as go-betweens (yentles, if you will) in arranging marriages. The novel is somewhat forthright about sex - the (male) protagonist (Kukiju), a 20-something man whose parents are both dead and who seems to have plenty of money has sex with a 45-year-old woman, Mrs. Ota, formerly his father's mistress, and later w/ her daughter; in both instances, the women, consumed with guilt and remorse, kill themselves. His other potential match, a beautiful young woman of about his age, seems just to vanish when he balks at going through with the engagement process. Most of the action such as it is involves lengthy descriptions of the tea service, including much discussion about which pottery should be used in serving the tea; apparently Kukiju has some valuable antique pottery available. Toward the end, he smashes one of the bowls, and later he tries to fit the pieces together, but one is missing. For the most part this is an extremely subtle narrative, w/ little "action" in the foreground and lots of stirred up feeling and emotion left hinted at but unsaid. Still, it's a novel that could have been written in 1850, and for that matter could have been set in 1650, if we could just cut the few references to trains and telephones. It's astonishing that Kawabata could make no reference at all to postwar Japan - the American occupation, the guilt, the bombing and destruction, the difficult recovery - yet it's possible that this novel in its quiet and oblique manner refers to the destruction (the smashed antique tea bowl?) and looks back on a way of life that is doomed, much as, say, Gone with the Wind looked back w/ a false nostalgia on a way of life that deserved its eradication.