The Lake (novel)

infobox book
name = The Lake
title_orig = みづうみ
"Mizuumi"
author = Yasunari Kawabata
country = Japan
language = Japanese
genre = Novel
publisher =
pub_date = 1954
english pub_date =
media type = Print (paperback)
preceded_by = The Sound of the Mountain
followed_by = The House of the Sleeping Beauties

"The Lake" is a short 1954 novel by Japanese Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata. This book tells the story of a former schoolteacher named Gimpei Momoi. Beginning in Karuizawa, the novel alternates between the now middle-aged Momoi and recurring memories of a lake from his hometown, and his interactions with a number of women, beginning with a relative and the uncomfortable circumstances surrounding a death in his family. The novel then explores his connection to a woman who loses a purse full of several years' worth of money earned as a lover to an older man as well as a relationship with a student, Hisako, when Momoi is a teacher, a relationship that begins with a somewhat odd-request for a good cure for a foot condition Momoi suffers from and then examines the circumstances of Hisako's family, who are well-off in the immediate post-war era. Finally, the now middle-aged Momoi follows a young girl during a summer period leading up to a festival and crosses path with a woman closer to his age.