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Snow Country
To this haunting novel of wasted love, Kawabata brings the brushstroke suggestiveness and astonishing grasp of motive that earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature. As he chronicles the affair between a wealthy dilettante and the mountain geisha who gives herself to him without illusions or regrets, one of Japan's greatest writers creates a work that is dense in implicati...more
Paperback, 175 pages
Published
January 30th 1996
by Vintage
(first published 1948)
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I read the other reviews of Snow Country before I read the book. I'm nervous to look at any more right now, before I begin writing my own review (erm technically I'm writing it right now). It's like when you mishear lyrics in a song and find out the line that killed you wasn't what they were singing at all. Lights turned on and it's not as beautiful when it's the real world in day time? So the introductions I've read... I didn't read Snow Country as a love triangle. I don't want to.
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In slow motion until the point of contact, this novella quite simply and mercilessly spends its energy reserves back-handing you with the its last few pages. I am getting ahead of myself, but it is important that you know this fact. I hear a lot of trash talked on Japanese novels and films from time to time (excluding those centering on martial arts, of course), of how they are slow, simple, boring, plotless, and where are the explosions, anyway? Well...
First off, I think that's a...more
First off, I think that's a...more
at tosh's prodding i'd been on something of a japanese kick in '07, burned through mishima, dazai, tanizaki, murakami, etc. -- when deciding which kawabata to tackle, charles forwarded an interview in which vollmann mentioned snow country as in his all-time top ten. well, i read it on the flight from florida to california and stumbled off that plane utterly & totally flattened. snow country. whew. snow country. sad and enigmatic and spare and packed with some of the most odd & lyrical images i'v...more
Let it be known that this is a terrible translation. I am convinced that I would have enjoyed this book ten times as much if someone other than Edward Seidensticker had bothered to translate it. My reasoning? Kawabata's Palm-of-the-Hand Stories is one best collections of short stories I have ever read. In the back of that book is "Gleanings from Snow Country," the last work Kawabata wrote before he died. It is a condensation of the novel in question. Remarkably, it is not even a rewri...more
I think reading Kawabata should be all right for those readers seeking solitude, nature and tradition. I mean we simply can't find any emotional sentimentality related to love at first sight or an adventurous journey to find one's true love or both lovers-to-be in a romantic mood somewhere we've never been to.
Literally, this most famous one of his classic Japanese novels (as claimed at the back cover) should inspire those willing to read him for the first time by these three excerpt...more
Literally, this most famous one of his classic Japanese novels (as claimed at the back cover) should inspire those willing to read him for the first time by these three excerpt...more
إلى بلد الثلوج تشده ذكرى ملمس يد ناعمة وتسريحة جيشا عالياً جداً كالجبل الشامخ وسط كل ذلك البياض , ينجذب بقوة لذلك الإتجاه بلا سبب واضح مع أنه لا يعرف حقاً ماذا يجدر به أن يفعل ,
على سكك الحديد وقوف وتلويجة يد كم تبدو سهولة هذا المشهد لمن يتأمله من بعيد , لكن إن مرَّ عليه يوماً سيكون أصعب موقف قد يصادفه في حياته .
الروايات اليابانية هي روايات وصف وطبيعة حتى أن التشبيهات التي يستخدمها أبطال القصة كلها مستوحاة من الثلوج الوزهور والشجر والأنهار تشعرنا حينَ القراءة بأنن...more
على سكك الحديد وقوف وتلويجة يد كم تبدو سهولة هذا المشهد لمن يتأمله من بعيد , لكن إن مرَّ عليه يوماً سيكون أصعب موقف قد يصادفه في حياته .
الروايات اليابانية هي روايات وصف وطبيعة حتى أن التشبيهات التي يستخدمها أبطال القصة كلها مستوحاة من الثلوج الوزهور والشجر والأنهار تشعرنا حينَ القراءة بأنن...more
i was a bit disappointed with this, especially if it's one of kawabata's more celebrated (or just famous?) books, or one of his break-out books, and since he is a nobel winner. his prose is lovely, but i felt like i was watching a very tactful and well-mannered movie from the 50s where they divert your attention to nice scenery shots or where they only show the actors' legs when they're kissing. the narrative skipped forward so much that it was hard to stay oriented, and the aforementioned allus...more
Short, haiku-like story set in a hot springs resort in the mountains on the west part of Japan where it snows heavily each winter. The nature images are very strong. Since the story is about a dissolute man and a geisha, I didn't relate to either protagonist, but the aura of the novel is intense.
How fitting that Kawabata is a master exposing the sublime in the most mundane; Snow Country creates a grand study of the human heart out of a mish-mash of the vulgar and pathetic. Make no mistake, Shimamura is essentially a playboy, Komako a geisha lush. Their indulgent lives play out in ritual, sometimes nonsensical, sometimes pointedly direct. Through it all, snow, beautiful and lulling, anesthetizes even the reader. Living in the snow country is committing to the whisper, the smirk and t...more
Maybe the translation is lost on me....I know that Yasunari Kawabata was the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. His writing is rich with poetry:
"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 w...more
"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 w...more
The Book Report: Married, bored (but I repeat myself) aesthete, philanderer, and flaneur Shimamura, an aficionado of Western ballet (although he's never seen one), takes a solo trip into Japan's Snow Country. While there in the wildest of boondocks Japan possesses, he meets Komako, probably the world's worst geisha, but apparently a fascinating contrast to all other women for Shimamura. They meet a total of three times in two years. Another woman, Yoko, hovers purposelessly around the narrative ...more
This is the story of three different trips by Shimamura up into the Snow Country of Japan. Each trip occurs in a different season, and each in turn reflects his deepening involvement with a country geisha in a small village. While journeying by train there for his second visit he is struck by the beauty of a fellow passenger who by chance is traveling to the same village. As Shimamura gets more deeply involved, at least physically, with the geisha, he remains deeply intrigued by the other woman....more
It is a love story of sorts, it is a love story but not the conventional they-lived-happy ever after kind. It is the story of an affair between a man and a prostitute, well that is a love story as well just not the type that is often approved of.
A loner travels to Yuzawa (the name isn’t mentioned in the book itself), where he comes once a year to meet a geisha. The town lives almost exclusively on its tourism generated by its hot springs. He is an expert of sorts on Western ballet but in ...more
A loner travels to Yuzawa (the name isn’t mentioned in the book itself), where he comes once a year to meet a geisha. The town lives almost exclusively on its tourism generated by its hot springs. He is an expert of sorts on Western ballet but in ...more
This book was supposed to have been written from 1934 to 1947. The principal protagonist, a married man named Shimamura, was the prototype of the modern Japanese sex tourist. Once in a while, without his family, he goes to a place in Japan where snow falls the heaviest [the "Snow Country":] so he can have sex with geishas.
If this will be made into a movie, it would be better that this be made into a black and white film, the scenes always dark and cold, like Shimamura himse...more
If this will be made into a movie, it would be better that this be made into a black and white film, the scenes always dark and cold, like Shimamura himse...more
Most of this book is a close character study of two people. An older, idle gentleman of wealth falls for a young geisha in a mountain village. There interactions are both subtle and schizophrenic, and I was often catching up to the characters' thoughts. Their interactions read more like the screenplay - one with many full silences - than a novel.
For the last 20 pages, we're torn out of the fragmented dialogue and shown a huge, flowing metaphor. The novel's final action suddenly...more
For the last 20 pages, we're torn out of the fragmented dialogue and shown a huge, flowing metaphor. The novel's final action suddenly...more
Kawabata creates a timeless poetic lovestory interspersed with poetic moments in descriptions of landscapes that speak for the characters' moods and provide subtle indications and foreshadowings on the relationship. While the main story is the skeleton of the book, the poetic descriptions are like joints; each reader interprets them according to his or her own experience and mentally twists the limbs of the skeleton to give shape to the creature that is this novel. Or something like that.
This novel has a beautiful title, and some beautiful (literary) metaphors. Some images that I was able to spot: The washing of the Chijimi kimono in the snow, on the background the raising Sun (had it been the washing of clothes at the fountain, on the white stones of a Spanish market, I would have thought "Carmen", but the comparison doesn't do justice, for there is the symbol of the Japanese Sun) .... the trembling fingers longing to touch the passion .... The book generally describe...more
My experience of reading this book consisted first of utter confusion. What was going on? Who was saying what to whom? Who was a geisha and who simply a girl glimpsed on a train? Did anyone have a name, a history? Simple, solid human emotions that I could clearly relate to? This, together with the impression of snow-muffling, dark nights, the utter hush that only the dead of winter can bring. A train creeping along a track flanked by two great walls of banked snow. The hardscrabble life of a mys...more
Kawabata's writing in "Snow Country" is often beautiful; his description of Shimamura's observation of all the insects dying in his room is s incredibly haunting. Unfortunately, despite only being 175 pages long, i found the plot to be glacially slow paced throughout most of the book. Each time i saw a footnote made by the translator i became excited, for then i knew something new was about to be concisely described, something Kawabata takes many pages to do. One of the main strengths ...more
Okay, I'm a bit ashamed to say this , since it was such a short book , but I had trouble finishing it ....
Not to say the book was bad or that I didn't like it ... But it was like looking at a nice picture . It's beautiful, but it doesn't move you like the real scenery would.
I was not bored , no ... But I was on the edge of it . I enjoyed the calm & slow feeling of the story , the nice scenery descriptions , but I don't think I will read it again .
I want to ...more
Not to say the book was bad or that I didn't like it ... But it was like looking at a nice picture . It's beautiful, but it doesn't move you like the real scenery would.
I was not bored , no ... But I was on the edge of it . I enjoyed the calm & slow feeling of the story , the nice scenery descriptions , but I don't think I will read it again .
I want to ...more
Pernahkah kau mencuri pandang lewat pantulan kaca, entah itu di pintu kaca, jendela kaca, kaca pada jendela mobil, kaca spion, kaca lemari, atau apapun yang bisa memantulkan bayangan? Apa yang kau lihat dan rasakan?
Peristiwa ini adalah kisah awal novel ini. Dalam perjalanan ke suatu tempat yang indah alamnya, Shimamura memerhatikan seorang gadis yang ada di depannya dengan melihat melalui pantulan jendela kaca kereta api. Kecantikan gadis itu sungguh memesonanya. Bisa dibayangkan ket...more
Peristiwa ini adalah kisah awal novel ini. Dalam perjalanan ke suatu tempat yang indah alamnya, Shimamura memerhatikan seorang gadis yang ada di depannya dengan melihat melalui pantulan jendela kaca kereta api. Kecantikan gadis itu sungguh memesonanya. Bisa dibayangkan ket...more
From the back:
"With the brushstroke suggestiveness and astonishing grasp of motive that won him the Nobel Prize for Literature, Yasunari Kawabata tells a story of wasted love set amide the desolate beauty of western Japan, the snowiest region on earth. It is there, at an isolated mountain hotspring, that the wealthy sophisticate Shimamura meets the geisha Komako, who gives herself to him without regrets, knowing that their passion cannot last."
My review: This is...more
"With the brushstroke suggestiveness and astonishing grasp of motive that won him the Nobel Prize for Literature, Yasunari Kawabata tells a story of wasted love set amide the desolate beauty of western Japan, the snowiest region on earth. It is there, at an isolated mountain hotspring, that the wealthy sophisticate Shimamura meets the geisha Komako, who gives herself to him without regrets, knowing that their passion cannot last."
My review: This is...more
This book was terribly boring, just extremely tedious and really not worth reading. In one word: Blah. The symbolism and imagery is heavy-handed and not significant at all (I can't believe three pages are spent describing the reflection of an eye in a train window, as if it's somehow important). It just seems like this book tries very very hard to mean something and it just falls flat, yet there are those who insist it IS meaningful and those people are like 90% of the reason this book is still ...more
putih itu memerahkan
putih itu mengitamkan
putih itu membekukan
putih itu mencairkan merah yang hitam
kisah antara pelancong (shimamura) yang berhubungan dengan seorang geisha (komako) dalam masa melancong na. awal pertemuan mereka pertama kali pada sebuah desa dengan pemandia air panas, membuat masing-masing dari mereka menantikan kehadiran salah satu na. sekilas hanyalah tampak seperti kisah cinta biasa, antar sepasang umat manusia...
namun siapa sangka shi...more
putih itu mengitamkan
putih itu membekukan
putih itu mencairkan merah yang hitam
kisah antara pelancong (shimamura) yang berhubungan dengan seorang geisha (komako) dalam masa melancong na. awal pertemuan mereka pertama kali pada sebuah desa dengan pemandia air panas, membuat masing-masing dari mereka menantikan kehadiran salah satu na. sekilas hanyalah tampak seperti kisah cinta biasa, antar sepasang umat manusia...
namun siapa sangka shi...more
The trick is find a better translation otherwise you'll suffer what we call a Lost in translation! Kawabata won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968 for this and he is known for his deep affinity to and understanding of classical haiku poetry. Haiku represents a fundamental element of Japanese culture then and now. Snow Country has been described as haiku in prose. That's why a GOOD translation is a must.
And am I the first one to notice this, why Yasunari Kawabata is smoking in h...more
And am I the first one to notice this, why Yasunari Kawabata is smoking in h...more
Tad Saffarally
added it
Kawabata brings the grasp of suggestiveness that hints at the slightest feeling and his contrasts to things so unlike yet strikingly beautiful into a novel of craft. A novel of the confusion of wasted love. Yasunari Kawabata chronicles the 'affair' between a wealthy idler and the innocent mountain geisha who gives herself to him without regret or a hesitation. A one-sided love in a way and one that can't last. It leaves you mysterious but not surprised.
If you like a book tha...more
If you like a book tha...more
Borrowed from a friend who introduced it to her book club and highly recommends it ... by a Japanese author who won the Nobel prize for literature. It's an interesting love story that has potential....NOW FINISHED: Well, I wasn’t that impressed. It was rather slow moving and there wasn’t enough of a plot line. I checked back with my friend and I seem to have misunderstood. She felt that it wasn’t that good either. The two main characters are somewhat interesting, but you don’t get enough o...more
Snow Country is a novel about the three visits of Shimamura, a wealthy man of leisure to a hot springs mountain resort on the western side of Japan. It is spring the first time and he meets a local geisha, Komako. She is reluctant to be a geisha but feels she needs a 'protector'. Komako is immature, chatty and highly emotional.
The next visit is in the fall, Komako has grown and matured. She finds the relationship a struggle.
The final visit is in the winter and Shimamura a...more
The next visit is in the fall, Komako has grown and matured. She finds the relationship a struggle.
The final visit is in the winter and Shimamura a...more
During the time that this book was written many people believed that becoming a modern, industrialized, country meant loneliness and detachment for the people of Japan, which is the main theme of the Snow Country. This theme of melancholy is portrayed through the love affair between an onsen geisha named Komako and a Japanese businessman named Shimamura. I believe that Komako and the snow country represents the old Japan, the one with traditional values such as Shintoism, Confucian hierarchy, an...more
Japan. The snow country, where the snowflakes are so big they look like white peonies and the snow is so deep that children jump from second floor windows and swim in it. Shimamura, a wealthy man from Tokyo, visits a hot springs resort where he meets a geisha called Komako. The story recounts their relationship and how it changes and disintegrates through the course of Shimamura’s three visits to the snow country. It’s a very subtle and nuanced piece of writing in which much is implied rather th...more
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Yasunari Kawabata (Kawabata Yasunari, 14 June 1899 - 16 April 1972) was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and are still widely read.
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“But even more than her diary, Shimamura was surprised at her statement that she had carefully cataloged every novel and short story she had read since she was fifteen or sixteen. The record already filled ten notebooks.
"You write down your criticisms, do you?"
"I could never do anything like that. I just write down the author and the characters and how they are related to each other. That is about all."
"But what good does it do?"
"None at all."
"A waste of effort."
"A complete waste of effort," she answered brightly, as though the admission meant little to her. She gazed solemnly at Shimamura, however.
A complete waste of effort. For some reason Shimamura wanted to stress the point. But, drawn to her at that moment, he felt a quiet like the voice of the rain flow over him. He knew well enough that for her it was in fact no waste of effort, but somehow the final determination that it was had the effect of distilling and purifying the woman's existence.”
—
13 people liked it
"You write down your criticisms, do you?"
"I could never do anything like that. I just write down the author and the characters and how they are related to each other. That is about all."
"But what good does it do?"
"None at all."
"A waste of effort."
"A complete waste of effort," she answered brightly, as though the admission meant little to her. She gazed solemnly at Shimamura, however.
A complete waste of effort. For some reason Shimamura wanted to stress the point. But, drawn to her at that moment, he felt a quiet like the voice of the rain flow over him. He knew well enough that for her it was in fact no waste of effort, but somehow the final determination that it was had the effect of distilling and purifying the woman's existence.”
“The road was frozen. The village lay quiet under the cold sky. Komako hitched up the skirt of her kimono and tucked it into her obi. The moon shone like a blade frozen in blue ice.”
—
7 people liked it
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