Seasons pass and feelings grow, but it is in the beauty of nature that the author transfigures what is at work between the three characters.įirst Japanese winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature He also makes nature a character in its own right: the stars, the white of the mountainsides in winter, the green of the rice fields in spring, the warm hues of the autumn leaves. He lingers more on the heavy folds of a kimono, the delicate harmony of slow gestures, the grace of bodies moving as they perform dance steps. Rather than examining passionate love, however, Yasunari Kawabata prefers to suggest, circumvent, and indeed shift the gaze of the narrator in Snow Country. The protagonist, Shimamura, is an artist as rich as he is idle, and who regularly retires to the Japanese mountains, the ‘snow country.’ There, he first meets Yoko, while on a train journey that takes him to the mountaintops where the maple trees are decked out in an autumnal red hue, then Kamado, a geisha who presides at the inn where he is staying. Snow Country is a story of thwarted, impossible, passionate love.
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