As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’m pleased that I’ve been able to include translated works for the #1937Club, and today sees another one making its appearance on the Ramblings! This book was a last minute idea, and I’m perhaps cheating slightly with the date, as it’s a work which was released in segments, then a complete version in 1937 and then revised for a later edition. The book is “Snow Country” by Yasunari Kawabata, translated by Edward G. Seidensticker. I’m probably pushing things a little by including it here, but I’m going by the Wikipedia entry which says: “He combined these segments into a “complete” Snow Country, making numerous changes to the texts as they appeared in the journals, which was published in June 1937.” And it’s my blog, and I felt like reading it, so there!! 😀

At 114 pages in my edition, “Snow Country” is in novella territory (though the typeface *is* very small…) I believe it’s often considered Kawabata’s masterpiece and it tells the story of Komako, a young girl who lives in a mountainous hot spring village in Japan in the eponymous snow country, and her love for Shimamura, a visitor from Tokyo. When they first meet, Komako is still very young and although she helps out at parties, she’s not yet a trained geisha. However, on his return for a repeat visit, Shimamura finds that she’s become a geisha, and the book traces their odd relationship over these visits, as well as both of their relationships with Yoko, a young woman Shimamura first encounters on a train journey to the village.

The book is set against the changing seasons in the snow country, and the weather has extremes as well as seeming to influence many of the characters’ actions. Shimamura himself is an odd, almost impassive, person; escaping from his family to get away from Tokyo for a while, he thinks nothing of spending time with other women, and as well as Komako, he’s very drawn to Yoko. He’s something of a dilettante, with an interest in Western ballet (despite never having seen one) and his behaviour towards Komako is certainly inconsistent.

Following a stream, the train came out on the plain. A mountain, cut at the top in curious notches and spires, fell off in a graceful sweep to the far skirts. Over it the moon was rising. The solid, integral shape of the mountain, taking up the whole of the evening landscape there at the end of the plain, was set off in a deep purple against the pale light of the sky. The moon was no longer an afternoon white, but, faintly colored, it had not yet taken on the clear coldness of the winter night. There was not a bird in the sky. Nothing broke the lines of the wide skirts to the right and the left. Where the mountain swept down to meet the river, a stark white building, a hydroelectric plant perhaps, stood out sharply from the withered scene the train window framed, one last spot saved from the night.

For her part, Komako is a women of emotional extremes, and elements of her past are gradually revealed over the length of the book. On the initial train journey, Yoko had been looking after a young man called Yukio, and there are rumours that he was engaged to Komako. Despite her denials, it appears that Komako has taken up work as a geisha to pay his medical bills (a burden which will disappear with his death). She drinks heavily, behaves erratically and has a troubled relationship with Yoko. It’s clear that the rather flimsy Shimamura is obsessed with beauty and aesthetics, but has no real substance; and as events build to a dramatic climax, it seems that the two women have only each to care about, with the man in the centre of this taking a step backwards at every point where he might have been some use.

“Snow Country” is a beautifully written book which throws up a number of questions and provokes many thoughts! Shimamura himself is an oddly elusive character, often drifting off into reveries and dreams when faced with beauty in any form, whether of a human face or voice, or indeed the stars and mountains surrounding him. There’s a superficial aspect to him, whereas the women seem much more solid. Komako is a young and emotional girl, moving into womanhood, drinking too much, obsessed with Shimamura yet unable to hold onto him, and I felt sorry for her; it seems that she’s simply being used and has no chance of getting what she wants. Yoko too is somewhat evasive and I was never quite sure what motivated her.

Whether it can be classed as from 1937 or not, I found “Snow Country” a fascinating and absorbing read, full of beautiful imagery and drama; and it’s left me thinking about how overwhelming nature can be, how tragic it is that Komako’s beauty will be wasted before long because of her dissipated lifestyle, and how we should perhaps put people before abstract notions of aesthetics. There are hints of the contrast between tradition and modernity too; despite the older tradition of the geisha, there are trains and modern trappings which indicate this is a world which is changing. The writing has almost a hypnotic quality, and although the book is an easy, potentially quick read, it has the kind of prose that lingers in the mind. An unforgettable book, then, and even if it’s cheating a little, I’m glad I chose to read “Snow Country” now!