Photo of Kawabata taken by Cecil Beaton for the back cover of Thousand Cranes. Source.
From a letter from Kawabata to Yukio Mishima, dated February 7th, 1957:
Earlier today, while a freezing rain was coming down, Mr Beaton arrived. He photographed me in the entranceway in front of the folding screen decorated with Iwaya Ichiroku's calligraphy. Mr Murray came too, the day before he was to leave for the US. He also took my picture, posing me beside the Buddha head that had come from Hadda, Afghanistan.
The cultural export of a wrinkled old head. This is the kind of thing that befalls me these days.
As you have already heard, Jinzai is doing worse.
Mr Beaton: "Do you reserve certain hours for writing?" My wife: "He's so busy with PEN right now, he's stopped writing." Mr Beaton: "It would be better to give up that kind of work!"
I plan to go abroad in April to organize for PEN, but the sad fact is I get intestinal trouble whenever I eat Western food. No doubt I should take it easy a while longer.
This is my own translation of the French translation by Dominique Palmé, Kawabata - Mishima Correspondence, pages 105 - 106, Le Livre de Poche #3357.