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.

Yukio Mishim More...

The Book Report: Married, bored (but I repeat myself) aesthete, philanderer, and flâneur 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...

New love is as delicate as the wings of a moth.

I try to write but the words disintegrate between my fingertips. They melt like snow on my tongue. Maybe a light breeze could carry them across the ocean and drop them at your feet. They will slip through your fingers like sand. They will drift through the air like dandelion wishes.

New love is as fleeting as the blossoms of an almond tree.

The words might cut you like the sharp edge of this paper. The tiny cuts will sting. They buzz around your ear More...

I view Asian Art through Western eyes. Not that I have a choice, I guess. That process enhances, even as it limits.




I love the beauty, the intricacy of Japanese woodblock prints, but I fear I’m seeing them superficially. Am I missing something, I wonder, if only a nuance? And Murakami. Even though his works owe much to Bulgakov and The Beatles, there is a descent from Japanese forerunners and the history and culture of those islands that probably – okay, certainly - eludes me.

Once an artist hits More...

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 lot of hooey. 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 im More...

Let’s suppose that you are fortunate/unfortunate enough to be in love right now, with a girl called Becky no less, and let’s also imagine that your friend, who we will call Mike, having noted your permanently beaming countenance, poses you a difficult question; Mike’s an inquisitive sort, so he straight out demands a serious response to this query: “what is it about Becky that makes you love her?”

After regaining your composure at Mike’s brashness, you would likely reply with general, mostly vac 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 excerpts I personal 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 rewriting but r More...

A feeling of nagging, hopeless impotence came over Shimamura at the thought that a simple misunderstanding had worked its way so deep into the woman's being.

Is that what love is all about in the end! A misunderstanding shaping one's entire existence, weaving into the essense of your being. Throughout, pain is a heavy undercurrent that at some point morphs into life itself. The elusive nature of people, of feelings, of love can be understood only in the context of the fleeting snowscape viewed fr More...

This book was supposed to have been written from 1934 to 1947. The principal protagonist, a married man named Shimamura, is 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 is made into a movie, it would be better that this be in a black and white film, the scenes always dark and cold, like Shimamura himself, who does not seem to be capable 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 بأننا نقتعد كرسيا في وسط حديقة على ي 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 the d 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 was red over the snowy More...

Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country is widely considered to be the writer’s masterpiece: a powerful tale of wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan. The novel began as a single short story published in a literary journal in January 1935. Kawabata continued writing about the characters afterward, with parts of the novel ultimately appearing in five different journals before he published the the book in whole. He continued working on the novel over a period of yea More...

"Snow Country" is a subtle, poetic, love story set in the remote northern mountains of Honshu. A rich aimless dilettante called Shimamura arrives in the village from Tokyo, he procures the services of Komako a reluctant geisha who is seeking a better life.

Kawabata's style is demonstrative of classical Japanese prose writing. This style places emphasis on lyricism, mood and reflection rather than on plot and character development. The snow country landscape is intense, shadowy, bleak, enclosed, More...

الرواية اليابانية...تأتيك بنكهة خاصة...تمتزج فيها الطبيعة الثريّة...باللمسة الشاعرية العذبة...تتهادى على أنغام كلاسيكية ناعمة...وتحكي لك عن تجارب متفردة في عالم مختلف بقيمه الحضاريّة...يضيف لها كواباتا النهاية الآسرة وإن امتزجت ببعض الأسى...والتي تعيد لرتابة الرواية ألقها وزخمها.

يقول كواباتا: "يكفي غصن شجرة، إذا كان مرسوما بإتقان، لكي يسمع صوت الرياح"


ومن مثلك يا كواباتا يتقن رسم التفاصيل بعناية وعلى مهل؟؟!!...حتى أحسست ببرودة الثلج تتسرب إلى أطرافي!!

شيمامورا...أسير امرأتين...أسير صوت إحداهما الم More...

Vẫn phong cách quen thuộc của Kawabata. Truyện nhạt,có lẽ nhất là với những ai quen đọc văn học Nhật qua các tiểu thuyết của Murakami. Thêm nữa là diễn biến tâm lý các nhân vật trong truyện của ông thường có phần khó hiểu.
Tuy nhiên Kawabata lại là một nhà văn mình rất yêu thích và chưa có tác phẩm nào của ông làm mình thất vọng. Tác phẩm của ông luôn rất đẹp và vô cùng tinh tế. Một cái đẹp u buồn, hoài niệm. Một thế giới ảo ảnh, mơ hồ. Nói như vậy nghe thật sáo rỗng và giả tạo quá mức ( có phần More...

This book can be read in two ways: as the story of a love affair between a man looking to escape city life in the country and two women, one of whom is a country geisha; or as a commentary about Japan's shift towards Western modernity. Being obligated to read it for class and having little enthusiasm for the book, I read it as the latter--that is, at face-value--and found it exceedingly dull. Barely anything happens, aside from exchanges between characters and observations made by the protagonis More...

Loved this book. It's such a gem of a novel with the most amazing imagery. The introduction makes note of the author being accustom to the haiku format and it shows. It's amazing what he can describe with just a few very choice words.

What I loved:
The language first and foremost. But the story itself was sad in the best of ways. The relationships were carefully drawn but there were a lot of lose threads hanging that really kept the reader wondering.

What I learned:
I have enjoyed a lot of Japanese More...

Unless you are familiar with Japanese culture and language, you will find Snow Country different from most any novel you may have read. Read superficially the novel appears to follow a simple plot and structure. Yet, its intensity and beauty lies in the lyrical imagery of landscape and evocation of the protagonists' complex psyche and their relationships. The novel can be compared to a Japanese brushstroke painting, economic and suggestive, where the observant eye is able to complete the picture 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 realit 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 shows the entire 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.

I'm going to try to write two reviews of Kawabata's "Snow Country," a light version and one that sets out more fully what I really think about this novel in the context of recent events.

This is the light(er) version.

I've heard "Snow Country" described as a "love story" on several occasions. If there is some aspect of love that operates as one of the major themes in "Snow Country" it's the same sort of love that one encounters in "Leaving Las Vegas". In other words, it is the self-absorbed fascin More...

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 describes a World More...