Snow country

“The sound of the freezing of snow over the land seemed to roar deep into the earth. There was no moon. The stars, almost too many of them to be true, came forward so brightly that it was as if they were falling with the swiftness of the void.”

It was well into July when I read this, the dog days of summer, as you could call them; now it is August when I am (finally) writing this review. Needless to say, I am exhausted by summer and long for the cold and quiet days of winter—the best season. This book was a fitting read for the occasion, taking me to a landscape full of snow, quietude, and even comfy hot springs/onsen as a reprieve. The atmosphere is one of my favorite things about this novel, though Kawabata’s writing left many good impressions. This is the first Kawabata I’ve read, but I am henceforth eager to read more, especially his The Master of Go. Apparently, Snow Country is (rightly) considered a classic of Japanese literature, and was even one of the novels that led to Kawabata’s Nobel Prize. At its core, the novel is one of many contradictions. We have the contrast between the protagonist, Shimamaura, and his beloved courtesan, Komako; one is cold and almost lifeless, and the other is warm and red, almost burning with ardor. The landscape shifts between winter and spring for Shimamura’s visits. Shimamura himself is an urban professional, a white-collar ‘knowledge worker’ who himself acknowledges the quasi-meaningless of his own work; Komako is a relic of the provincial country town setting, eager to get away and make something of herself, but almost entirely stuck in her homespun ways. Then there is the stark beauty of Komako, the centerpiece of the novel and of Shimamura’s desire; it is almost a self-contradiction in itself, since Shimamura veers between obsessive admiration and an inability to even look her in the eye at times. Kawabata’s characters bring the story to life, really, since there isn’t a classic plot. As with most other Japanese texts I’ve read, the plot is a thinly veiled skeletal structure, only there to prop up the actions of the characters and demonstrate their interactions with each other. Komako and Shimamura are our protagonists, but they share significant space with secondary characters—chiefly, Yoko, a young woman who also catches Shimamura’s eye, but also smaller figures, such as the onsen staff and the various boarding families that Komako stays with. The world felt decently populated, and the characters’ relationships were depicted in a dynamic and realistic manner.The novel is punctuated by vignettes, various scenes ranging from Shimamura’s first meeting with Komako to the climax of the novel and its aftermath. At times, the writing style did confound me, just because I am so used to a solid structure from the perspective of western novels. There are, as seems to be usual for Japanese literature, many ideas that are left unsaid or so subtle so as to be missed if you aren’t carefully considering them; thus, I did feel confused or have to re-read some lines a few times to make sense of the broader implications. However, this didn’t detract from the reading experience, but it added a deeper layer of complexity that I grew to appreciate. The scenes were also masterfully descriptive; the setting of an increasingly industrializing and modernized Japan in a mountainous winter onsen town was well encapsulated in Kawabata’s descriptions. Moreover, there is a certain scene in which the tone of the novel achieves its climax with the difference of just one word—truly incredible. The ending seems to come upon the reader somewhat too soon, but its parting image is a thoughtful one; I couldn’t help but wonder about it for quite a while after finishing. Although the overall story of the love affair didn’t strike me as much as I thought it would, the simplicity of Kawabata’s telling of it definitely struck a chord with me. This is likely a novel that will stay with me for a time, and I definitely recommend checking it out.