Snow Country Paperback – International Edition, January 30, 1996

"Snow Country", by Yasunari Kawabata, translated by Edward Seidensticker, is the first book by this Japanese Nobel Prize winner that I have read.I mention the translator because a non-Japanese speaker is totally dependent on the skill of the translator to capture the atmosphere, the nuances and the unspoken cultural aspects of the original Japanese. It goes without saying that a straightforward translation of words and grammar would most likely be very inadequate. This is true of any translation of fiction, not only this book.With that caveat, I was struck with the simplicity of language and "spareness" of the writing. There is hardly a superfluous word, and very few adjectives or adverbs. I was reminded of the economy of Haiku and the simplicity of traditional Japanese gardens.The story is simple in the extreme. A wealthy Japanese sophisticate and dilettante, Shimamura, spends his holidays in a hot springs inn in the "snow country" of western Japan. The "snow country" setting would have special resonances for Japanese readers and the translator explains its significance and other important cultural aspects (eg the hot springs inn and the geisha) to help the English reader get into the mind of a Japanese reader. Of course, this is almost a futile exercise, but the attempt is worth making.Shimamura gets involved with a local geisha, Komako, who becomes very attached to him, although he does not reciprocate. Komako is a forlorn but appealing figure who is forced to make her own way in life as a hot springs geisha, bereft of family. Shimamura is married with children but he takes his holidays alone in the snow country.There is no happy ending and no unhappy ending - although the book ends in tragedy. The ending, like much of the narrative, is ambiguous.It is a book of great sadness in its human relationships and wasted love - and great beauty in its depiction of the physical landscape in the snow country. Imagery has great significance and the reader gets as much enjoyment from his impressions and intuitions as from the explicit text itself. This is the mark of a great writer.Like all truly great books, you could read Snow Country several times and gain fresh insights and pleasures with each reading.

This 1956 Nobel Prize winning book has become a classic. It is set in the snow country of Japan, an area which is cold and frosty for most of the year. This of course is a metaphor for the relationship between two lovers. The man is a wealthy businessman from Tokyo who leaves his wife and children several times a year to visit the snow country where he spends his time enjoying the baths. The woman is a young geisha who has to go to parties and entertain men but falls in love with the businessman. Often, she is drunk. Always she is needy. However, he does not return her passion.This book gives the reader a sense of a time and a place and a social contract that has gone on in Japan for centuries. Throughout, there is a feeling of sadness and despair. I felt very sorry for the geisha and was not surprised at the unhappy ending.However, this book is a classic and I am glad that I read it. It introduced me to a time and place and a way of life that unfortunately still exists. It is a tale told with subtlety and a command of language that makes this story all too real.

A strange tale, full of contrast. Kawabata's writing is, without doubt, capable of great beauty. The descriptions of the imagery framed by the train carriage window as it travels into the snow country, mirroring the secret beauty within the carriage against the landscape drifting by in the half-light - this is the wonderful prose I anticipated from this book. In the same vein, the descriptions of light, shade, mountains, stars and constellations can send the senses soaring. Some examples - "Black though the mountains were, they seemed at that moment brilliant with the colour of the snow. They seemed to him somehow transparent, somehow lonely" and "Insects smaller than moths gathered on the thick white powder at her neck. Some of them died there as Shimamura watched." But all too often the reader is brought crashing back to earth by the dull dialogue of the tale's capricious (feckless?) geisha. And our protagonist, Shimamura, is sadly at best an unlikeable chauvinist and at worst, a thin caricature, without depth or substance. Aspects of the translation also grate, particularly the all too frequent references to `mountain trousers' - whatever the Japanese word is would have been preferable.There is much to enjoy, but this is spoilt by too many annoying aspects which left me keen to finish the book ASAP and move on.

This is a story of a married Japanese man, Shimamura, of inherited wealth, and his relationship with a mountain geisha, Komako, in the mountainous snow country of northwestern Japan. The mountain village has a hot spring and attracts wealthy people year round, but especially for skiing in the winter. Shimamura is unable to love, is unsuccessful in his hobby (learning about western ballet with the purpose of exposing Japanese dance forms to its influence), and has no occupation or profession. Komako is, like rural geishas, sinking in social status and living in near-poverty. Her relationship with a dying young man, Yukio, and a strange, intense girl, Yoko, is left vague. Shimamura is also intrigued by Yoko. A great lot of the depth of the book is in what isn’t said as the story unfolds. It’s told in a spare writing style that makes use of symbols/metaphors whose meanings beg for a second reading, or even a third. It’s a short book, quite engaging, of under 200 pages. My copy has an invaluable introduction by Edward G. Seidensticker that sheds a great deal of light on the depth of the book. He likens the writing style to haiku. Snow Country was published in 1956, and was one of three novels cited when Kawabata won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968.