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Born in 1899 in Konohana-cho, Kita Ward, Osaka, as the eldest son of the physician Kawabata Eikichi. He lost his father at two, his mother at three, his grandmother at seven, his sister at ten, and his grandfather at fifteen, growing up an orphan. After Ibaraki Middle School he entered the First Higher School in 1917 and Tokyo Imperial University in 1920. In 1921 he launched the sixth 'Shin-shicho' with Kikuchi Kan's backing. In 1924 he founded 'Bungei Jidai' with Yokomitsu Riichi and others, leading the New Sensationist movement. He published 'The Izu Dancer' in 1926. Serialized from 1935 with the first part published in 1937, 'Snow Country' depicted the poignant exchange between the geisha Komako and the idle Shimamura at a hot-spring inn in Echigo Yuzawa, and was completed after the war in 1948. He published 'Thousand Cranes' (1949) and 'The Sound of the Mountain' (1949–54), looking into the spiritual world of postwar Japanese. On December 10, 1968, he attended the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm as the first Japanese Nobel laureate in literature, speaking on 'Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself.' On April 16, 1972, he died by gas asphyxiation in his work studio in Zushi, Kanagawa, at 72. He left no suicide note.

The deep sense of loss from successive bereavements in childhood became the substrate of his life's work. Taciturn and introspective, he had a delicate sensibility for female beauty and solitude. With deep grounding in Japanese classics he perfected the unique aesthetics of margin and fragment of Kawabata literature. 'The demon realm,' 'death,' and 'beauty' were his lifelong themes; in his late years he was profoundly shaken by the suicide of his close friend Mishima Yukio (1970).

As the first Japanese Nobel laureate in literature, he made Japanese literature known to the world — a monumental figure. 'Snow Country,' 'The Izu Dancer,' 'Thousand Cranes,' 'The Old Capital,' and 'The Sound of the Mountain' have been translated worldwide and are still read. He had a decisive influence on Mishima Yukio, Oe Kenzaburo, and later generations. The Kamakura Museum of Literature holds his books and manuscripts. The Kawabata Yasunari Museum in Ibaraki and his inn 'Yumotokan' at Yugashima in Izu preserve his memory.