Shimamura viaja de comboio para um balneário das regiões montanhosas do norte do Japão. Fica cativado por uma voz feminina que ressoa no comboio. A...
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May 20, 2011
Mariel
rated it: 
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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17 comments
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(23 people liked it)
Nov 30, 2011
Paquita Maria
rated it: 
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...
30 comments
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(17 people liked it)
Mar 08, 2011
brian
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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
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5 comments
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(14 people liked it)
Feb 07, 2008
Nick
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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
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(4 people liked it)
Dec 25, 2011
umberto
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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...
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Dec 04, 2010
Mashael
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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...
Feb 05, 2008
Sarah
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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
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(4 people liked it)
Jan 25, 2009
Trina
rated it:
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.
Jun 13, 2008
Jerome
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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
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Feb 01, 2009
Marcy
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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...
May 26, 2011
Richard
rated it:
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
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Mar 16, 2010
Eddie
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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.
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26 comments
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(20 people liked it)
Feb 21, 2010
77ships
rated it: 
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...
Feb 03, 2010
Joselito
rated it:
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...
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Nov 20, 2009
Joe
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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...
Dec 16, 2009
Blair
rated it:
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.
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Aug 03, 2011
Nick
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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
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Jun 26, 2010
MJ
rated it:
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
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(1 person liked it)
Feb 10, 2010
D
rated it:
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
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Dec 17, 2011
Camille
rated it:
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...
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Sep 07, 2010
Helvry
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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...
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(4 people liked it)
Sep 07, 2010
Faith
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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...
Feb 05, 2009
Sarah Nicole
rated it:
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
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Jun 10, 2010
an
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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...
Jan 24, 2012
Amalie
rated it:
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...
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Jan 08, 2011
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...
May 17, 2009
George
rated it:
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
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Sep 06, 2009
Dana
rated it:
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...
May 30, 2009
♔ Jessica Marie
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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
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Jul 27, 2011
Becky
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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
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