A Beautiful and Haunting Tale of Wasted Love

Shimamura , "an idler who inherited his money" visits the snow country to write, visit the hot springs, and collect beautiful woven cloth. Komako, a young, troubled geisha , falls in love with him, but he cannot return the emotion. It seems he lives his life from afar. This book could be read multiple times and layer upon layer will be revealed. ( )

The simplicity and suggestiveness of Yasunari Kawabata’s writing is great at invoking landscapes, sights and sounds. The descriptions of nature are beautiful. You want to read slowly, being aware of every word. It’s almost hypnotizing.

The world of “Snow Country” is claustrophobic and heartbreaking, the relationships so fraught and unreal. There are moments of joy here and there, but they are just a contrast to the melancholy.

The beautiful writing is quite wasted on Shimamura, who is a misogynistic pretentious asshole. I did like how the author got into his head - it was very skillfully done. And then there is Komako, who has such talents and riches in her soul, and does not seem to be aware of it. The only reason why she is in love with Shimamura (or had convinced herself that she is, it’s not clear) seems to be that there is no one else.

Reading this book has been like reading a very long haiku. ( )

Kawabata has been put, I think rightly, in a literary line that can be traced back to seventeenth-century haiku masters. Haiku are tiny seventeen-syllable poems that seek to convey a sudden awareness of beauty by a mating of opposite or incongruous terms. Thus the classical haiku characteristically fuses motion and stillness.Similarly Kawabata relies very heavily on a mingling of the senses.(Kindle Locations 35-37)

In Snow Country Kawabata has chosen a theme that makes ameeting between haiku and the novel possible.(Kindle Locations 42-43)

The girl's face seemed to be out in the flow of the evening mountains. It was then that a light shone in the face. The reflection in the mirror was not strong enough to blot out the light outside, nor was the light strong enough to dim the reflection. The light moved across the face, though not to light it up.It was a distant, cold light. As it sent its small ray through the pupil of the girl's eye, as the eye and the light were superimposed one on the other, the eye became a weirdly beautiful bit of phosphorescence on the sea of evening mountains. (Kindle Locations 127-131)

A ballet he had never seen was an art in another world. It was an unrivaled armchair reverie, a lyric from some paradise.He called his work research, but it was actually free, uncontrolled fantasy. He preferred not to savor the ballet in the flesh; rather he savored the phantasms of his own dancing imagination, called up by Western books and pictures. It was like being in love with someone he had never seen. (Kindle Locations 262-265)

There was something lonely, something sad in it, something that rather suggested a beggar who has lost all desire. It occurred to Shimamura that his own distant fantasy on the occidental ballet, built up from words and photographs in foreign books, was not in its way dissimilar. (Kindle Locations 425-427)

For a moment he was taken with the fancy that the light must pass through Komako, living in the silkworms' room, as it passed through the translucent silkworms. (Kindle Locations 538-539)

He was chilled to the pit of his stomach--but someone had left the windows wide open. The color of evening had already fallen on the mountain valley, early buried in shadows. Out of the dusk the distant mountains, still reflecting the light of the evening sun, seemed to have come much nearer. Presently, as the mountain chasms were far and near, high and low, the shadows in them began to deepen, and the sky was red over the snowy mountains, bathed now in but a wan light. Cedar groves stood out darkly by the river bank, at the ski ground, around the shrine. (Kindle Locations 610-614)

A chill swept over Shimamura. The goose flesh seemed to rise even to his cheeks.The first notes opened a transparent emptiness deep in his entrails, and in the emptiness the sound of the samisen reverberated. He was startled--or, better,he fell back as under a well-aimed blow. Taken with a feeling almost of reverence,washed by waves of remorse, defenseless, quite deprived of strength--there was nothing for him to do but give himself up to the current, to the pleasure of being swept off wherever Komako would take him. (Kindle Locations 696-700)

Before a white wall, shaded by eaves, a little girl in "mountain trousers" and orange-red flannel kimono, clearly brand-new, was bouncing a rubber ball. For Shimamura, there was autumn in the little scene. (Kindle Locations 1036-1038)

It was through a thin, smooth skin that man loved. Looking out at the evening mountains, Shimamura felt a sentimental longing for the human skin. (Kindle Locations 1058-1059)

When he was far away, he thought incessantly of Komako; but now that he was near her, this sighing for the human skin took on a dreamy quality like the spell of the mountains. Perhaps he felt a certain security, perhaps he was at the moment too intimate, too familiar with her body. (Kindle Locations 1064-1066)

He had stayed so long that one might wonder whether he had forgotten his wife and children. He stayed not because he could not leave Komako nor because he did not want to. He had simply fallen into the habit of waiting for those frequent visits. And the more continuous the assault became, the more he began to wonder what was lacking in him, what kept him from living as completely. He stood gazing at his own coldness, so to speak. He could not understand how she had so lost herself. All of Komako came to him, but it seemed that nothing went out from him to her. He heard in his chest, line snow piling up, the sound of Komako, an echo beating against empty walls. And he knew that he could not go on pampering himself forever. (Kindle Locations 1465-1470)

( )

I read this in college and really loved it. Just went back and read it again for a book group.

I'm not sure what to rate it. It wasn't exactly as I remembered it. I feel like I need to read some essays/theory before I can fully appreciate it again. It was probably through that lens of academia that I first appreciated it, and I've been out of that world for so long I kind of found myself wondering what was so good about it. (Not that it was bad, just that I don't remember why I LOVED it.)

En mand og en kvinde der tiltrækkes på tværs af sociale skel, men som alligevel ikke kan få hinanden – det er en historie vi har hørt før, men det gør det ikke mindre interessant at læse, hvordan den udspiller sig til andre tider og i andre kulturelle kontekster. Kawabatas lille klassiker udkom på japansk i 1947, og selvom krigen knap nok var slut, så er bogen blottet for politik.

Hovedpersonen er den velhavende Shimamura, der småkeder sig i sit ægteskab og ikke har de store ambitioner. Han har arvet tilstrækkeligt til at ikke at arbejde, og han hygger sig med at skrive artikler om vestlig ballet, der har den store fordel, at ingen af hans læsere ved noget om det, så der er ingen risiko for polemik på den konto. Tre gange rejser han op i bjergene til en lille by, der tidligere har levet af tekstiler, men som nu mest tager sig af turister, der kommer for at vandre eller stå på ski.

De mange (mandlige) gæster skal selvfølgelig have selskab, så der er også en gruppe af geishaer, der mod betaling sørger for sang, dans og konversation til deres fester. En af dem er den purunge Komoko, der fanger Shimamuras interesse. Hun interesserer sig for litteratur og teater, og så er hun både ligefrem og uforskammet på en måde, der er svær ikke at holde af. Deres relation bevæger sig tydeligvis ud over de almindelige rammer for et forhold mellem en geisha og en kunde, men der er stadig grænser.

Shimamura overvejer aldrig at gøre det permanent, og selvom han holder meget af Komoko, så forbliver hun mere en underholdende bibeskæftigelse, som han for en tid udforsker, end et egentligt omdrejningspunkt i hans liv. Komoko er hårdere ramt. Hun sværmer om ham, drikker og opfører sig upassende – men det afspejler måske også, at hun har det værre med tilværelsen som geisha, end hun i første omgang vil være ved.

Som læser måtte jeg leve med, at der var mange ting, som var svære at forstå, ikke mindst geisha-institutionen, der både er fascinerende anderledes og lige så frastødende som andre institutioner bygget op om patriarkalske normer og (rige) mænds ret til at købe sig til kvinder. Selvom det tilsyneladende ikke fylder i de tos forhold, så er det alligevel umuligt at forstå deres relation uden at have det med i baghovedet.

Bogen er meget velskrevet og stramt komponeret. Jeg satte pris på, hvordan den korte form, de skarpe dialoger og ikke mindst portrættet af Komoko, der trods sin udsatte position bliver bogens levende hjerte. ( )