Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

First published:Yukiguni, 1935-1937, serial; 1947, book (English translation, 1956)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Symbolic realism

Time of plot: 1930’s

Locale: Mountains of northwest Japan

Principal characters

• Shimamura, a writer from Tokyo
• Komako, a young geisha
• Yukio, the ill son of a music teacher
• Yoko, a girl who takes care of Yukio

The Story:

Shimamura, a writer who lives in Tokyo with his wife and children, is on a train headed to a hot-springs spa in a mountainous area of northwest Japan, an area known for its heavy snows. Shimamura speculates about the nature of the relationship between an ill man and a girl seated across the aisle from him and becomes fascinated by the girl’s image reflected in the mirrorlike window of the train. He sees her disembodied face against the background of the mountains and has a vision of her eye floating beautifully and transparently over the passing landscape of the mountains.

The girl and the man get off at the same stop as Shimamura, where a woman in a blue cape is waiting. Shimamura asks the stationmaster whether Komako, the girl who had lived with a music teacher and whom he had met the previous spring, is still in the area. The stationmaster informs him that the woman in the blue cape is the same girl he is trying to find. Shimamura checks in at the inn, a resort popular with visiting tourists. After his nightly bath he is startled to see Komako standing at the end of the corridor. They go to his room.

Shimamura remembers the first time he visited the inn and his first meeting with Komako: After returning to the inn after seven days of hiking in the mountains, he requests a geisha. No geishas are available, however, because of a celebration going on that evening. The maid suggests calling the girl who lives at the music teacher’s house. The girl, Komako, is not a geisha, but she fills in when necessary to help at large parties.

Shimamura is struck by Komako’s youth and purity. They talk at length, and he begins to feel uncomfortable asking for anything other than her friendship. He asks her to suggest the name of another geisha. After much hesitation, Komako sends for another girl, whom Shimamura finds distasteful and sends home. After the geisha leaves, Shimamura takes a short walk to the Shinto shrine near the inn, where he again briefly meets Komako, who has been watching him; he realizes that he is attracted to her. Later that evening, Komako bursts into Shimamura’s room, drunk from a party at the inn. They make love, and she leaves early in the morning to avoid detection. Shimamura returns to Tokyo the same day.

Komako is now a geisha in snow country. She tells Shimamura that she has kept a diary of the events of her life. They again make love, and Komako leaves at daylight.

As Shimamura walks around the village the next day, he comes upon a group of geishas, including Komako. He walks by, but is followed by Komako, who takes him to her home and shows him her room. Yukio, the ill man Shimamura had seen on the train, lives there as well; he is the son of the music teacher and is coming home to die from tuberculosis. Shimamura also sees the girl—Yoko—from the train and is struck by her voice and appearance. Later that day he hires a masseuse, who tells him that Yukio is Komako’s fiancé and that Komako has become a geisha to pay his medical bills. Komako later refutes this. Shimamura and Komako again make love that evening.

The next day, Shimamura asks Komako to play the samisen, a traditional stringed instrument. Shimamura stays at the inn for a number of days, and their affair continues. Shimamura decides to leave, and Komako accompanies him to the station. While they are waiting for the train, Yoko informs Komako that Yukio is dying and has asked for her. Komako refuses to leave until she sees Shimamura off on the train. Shimamura leaves on the train, back home to Tokyo, disconcerted by his experience in the mountains.

Several months later, Shimamura again visits Komako. It is now fall, and the countryside is alive with insects, ripening grass, and fall foliage. Komako chastises Shimamura for not visiting her as promised last February. She informs him that Yukio and the music teacher are both dead, and that she is now living under contract as a geisha with a family in the village. She also tells him about Yoko, who is now working at the inn and who spends much of her time visiting the grave of Yukio. Shimamura continues to be confused and perplexed by Komako and puzzled over the relationship between her and Yoko, who appear to harbor hostile feelings for one another. Komako visits Shimamura at odd hours, often drunk as a result of the parties she attends as a geisha. In a random meeting, Yoko asks Shimamura to be good to Komako, and then asks him to help her move to Tokyo. He asks her about her dislike of Komako, and Yoko tells him that Komako fears that Yoko will go crazy.

Shimamura escapes from the village for a daylong outing to two neighboring villages in an area of the mountains known for its weaving of the prized Chijimi grass-linen. Young, unmarried women spend the entire snowed-in winter season producing the fabric. Shimamura makes a direct analogy between the fabric and Komako.

As Shimamura returns by taxi to the hot spring, he passes a group of geishas standing in the doorway of a restaurant. Among them is Komako, who desperately jumps onto the running board of the taxi as he goes by. She resents his leaving without her. Next, they all hear an alarm, alerting them of a fire in the cocoon warehouse in the village below. This old building, formerly used to store silkworm cocoons, is the site for a film screening for the community. The film has caught fire, and the building is ablaze. Shimamura is obsessed with the engulfing image of the Milky Way above his head. Yoko leaps from the balcony of the warehouse; Komako screams and rushes to carry the body of Yoko away from the fire.

Bibliography

Carriere, Peter M. “Writing as Tea Ceremony: Kawabata’s Geido Aesthetics.” International Fiction Review 29, nos. 1/2 (2002): 52-61. Discusses Snow Country as representative of Japanese culture and aesthetics.

DeVere Brown, Sidney. “Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972): Tradition Versus Modernity.” World Literature Today 62, no. 3 (Summer, 1988): 375-379. Surveys Kawabata’s six major novels and argues that Kawabata’s work is autobiographical and only peripherally concerned with contemporary Japan.

Gessel, Van C. Three Modern Novelists: Soseki, Tanizaki, Kawabata. New York: Kodansha International, 1993. A significant biography of Kawabata with commentary on Japan’s modernization and its increasing engagement with the world.

Keene, Donald. Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984. Keene, an eminent critic, scholar, and translator of Japanese fiction, devotes part of his discussion to Kawabata. Traces many of Kawabata’s themes to his childhood experiences and describes the circumstances of publication and reception of his major works. Asserts that Kawabata’s main preoccupations were Japanese landscapes, Japanese women, and Japanese art.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Five Modern Japanese Novelists. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Presents brief portraits of five novelists Keene has known personally, with one chapter devoted to the life and work of Kawabata.

Matsugu, Miho. “In the Service of the Nation: Geisha and Kawabata Yasunari’s Snow Country.” In The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, edited by Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. This essay about the role of the geisha in Kawabata’s Snow Country is included in a collection that explores the history of courtesan culture.

Miyoshi, Masao. Accomplices of Silence: The Modern Japanese Novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974. A significant study of Kawabata within the larger context of the modern Japanese novel.

Mori, Masaki. “Kawabata’s Mirrored Poetics.” Japan Studies Review 8 (2004): 51-68. Explores Kawabata’s light and dark imagery, mirror imagery, and the relationship to Shikibu Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Symbiotic Conflict in Snow Country.” Japan Studies Review 11 (2007): 51-72. Explores the ambiguity, symbolism, and treatment of female characters in Snow Country.

Pollack, David. Reading Against Culture: Ideology and Narrative in the Japanese Novel. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992. Examines Snow Country through the lens of culture, which constructs both a sense of identity and a sense of the exclusion of others from outside the culture.

Starrs, Roy. Soundings in Time: The Fictive Art of Kawabata Yasunari. Richmond, England: Japan Library, 1998. A thorough study of Kawabata’s fiction that examines his practice as a novelist, his narrative techniques, and other characteristics of his work. Includes a lengthy discussion of Snow Country. The first full-length study of Kawabata’s fiction.

Ueda, Makato. “The Virgin, the Wife, and the Nun: Kawabata’s Snow Country.” In Approaches to the Modern Japanese Novel, edited by Kinya Tsuruta and Thomas E. Swann. Tokyo: Sophia University, 1976. An analysis of Kawabata’s Snow Country is included in this collection of fifteen essays that focus on Japanese literature within a cultural and literary context.