snow country

i completed snow country by yasunari kawabata last night. it was amazing. much of the feelings expressed in the novel are revealed by their absence than explicit actions or words. it is essentially a love story, a tragic one-sided love a young, feisty geisha named komako has for the protagonist shimamura. he is a married man, lives in tokyo, dabbles in theory of western dance (even though he has never been to a single performance) and spends a lot of time in the mountains and the hot spring village, where he meets komako and where the novel is set, save a short excursion to nearby villages. the hot spring village, which is never named, is in the snow country of remore western japan, a land of forbidding but desolate beauty where 10-12 ft winter snowfalls are not uncommon.

with sparse language bordering on haiku, kawabata masterfully evokes the emotions, the change of seasons, passage of time and the evanescence of life itself. besides these two characters, there is yoko whose ambiguous, shadowy spectral presence permeates the novel culminating in the highly ambiguous denouement. her reflection is the one shimamura obsessively focuses on, during his first train journey into the hot spring village; the fusion of her reflection on the glass and the mountain scenery outside and the fleeting images are described beautifully. she and komako seem to share a love-hate relationship, possibly as a result of vying for the same man (or men), the son of the music-teacher in whose house komako lives and for whom she becomes a geisha to pay his medical bills. nothing is explicitly stated. the events in the book are at the same time deliberate and spontaneous, like a tea-ceremony. shimamura's feelings for komako are never revealed while he admits at some point to himself that she likes him and her actions seem to agree with that. yet, it is hard to believe that he felt nothing for her. the doomed, unrequited love of komako is a poignant portrayal of wasted beauty of the hot spring geishas, who apparently move from one to another, each change drawing them more into misery and waste. running through the book is this thread of acts which are seemingly pointless- komako's love, shimamura's hobby, the traditional (and possibly dying, at the time of writing) art of weaving linen threads in the winter snow into a fabric that is part of summer kimonos, yoko's time spent in the cemetery mourning the dead man. and yet to each of them, their actions are important and fulfilling and seemingly purposeful. or maybe they simply do not realize that. or maybe be they do and still do it.

i will probably reread the novel. it is a complex work that can possibly evoke varied moods depending on that of the reader. perhaps a winter reading will reveal facets of the novel i missed during my autumnal read.