The Dancing Girl of Izu" or "The Izu Dancer" (伊豆の踊子 Izu no odoriko?) is a 1926 short story by the Japanese writer and Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata.[1] The short story was first translated into English by Edward Seidensticker and published in an abridged form as "The Izu Dancer" in The Atlantic Monthly in 1955.[2] A complete English translation of the story appeared in 1998.[3]
Kawabata's "The Izu Dancer" represents a lyrical and elegiac memory of early love.[4] The story is well known in Japan, and, today, part of the story's name, Odoriko (which means "dancing girl") is used as the name of express trains to the Izu area.[5]