How long does it take to read The Old Capital?
The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata takes about 3 hours 6 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 6 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1962. 169 pages, about 46,475 words.
7 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 5 hours 10 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 6 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 1 hour 56 minutes |
The page count is the median across 9 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
This novel tells the story of Chieko, the adopted daughter of a Kyoto kimono designer, Takichiro, and his wife, Shige. Since her youth, Chieko has been told that she was kidnapped as a baby by the couple in a moment of profound desire. When she is twenty, however, she learns that she was actually a foundling, abandoned by her real parents. Still, the love and affection Takichiro and Shige have given her satisfy her heart and she has no desire to seek out her biological parents--until she makes a startling discovery before the altar of Yasaka shrine. This work was specifically cited by the Nobel committee as one of the three novels for which the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968.
Subjects: Japan, fiction, Young women, fiction, Fiction, general, Japanese fiction
