The first notes opened a transparent emptiness deep in his entrails, and in the emptiness the sound of the samisen reverberated. The goose flesh seemed to rise even to his cheeks. As much as such insistence initially vexes Shimamura, he cannot help being moved.Ī chill swept over Shimamura. Though she knows her drunken guests would not know the difference between a dilettante and a virtuoso, she teaches herself the samisen by sight and ear. Yet Kamoko does not let her circumstances define her. the possibility that she will drift from one hot spring to another, more unwanted with each change, makes her a particularly poignant symbol of wasted, decaying beauty. The hot spring geisha must go on entertaining weekend guests, and the pretense that she is an artist and not a prostitute is often a thin one indeed. If the hot-spring geisha is not a social outcast, she is perilously near being one. Seidensticker describes Komako's life with the following words: In the introduction to the novel, the renowned Japanese-English translator Edward G. Perhaps such inclination also explains his penchant for doomed romances.ĭuring his time in the snow country, he develops an intense relationship with a hot-spring geisha Komako. He prefers the recreations in his mind over being moved by something entirely outside of himself. Though he studies and writes criticism about the ballet, he refuses to see a performance in person. For him, living is synonymous with inertness.
The novel centers around Shimamura, a man of leisure and a self-appointed critic of Western dance. Rather, it is a metaphorical illness of willful indifference and impassivity that afflicts its protagonist. But the disease that Kawabata explores is not a literal one such as Covid-19. In a sense, the snow is a symbol of disease in Kawabata's acclaimed novel. Both pandemic and blizzard make leaving home perilous and movement difficult, both inspire the toilet-paper-hoarding type of panic, both create a state of oblivion and suspended animation-a lot of helpless looking out of the window. Such a squall may leave everything looking immaculate and sparkling, yet it has the same effect as a widespread communicable disease. There, snow engulfs everything-the streets, the roofs, and even the wilderness-from December to May.
The title refers to the coastal region of Japan's main island that lies west of the Japanese Alps. Thus begins Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country. The earth lay white under the night sky." "The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.
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