The snow country

Japanese

In Japanese people the term Yukiguni, or in English Snow Country, can be used to describe those areas between mountains of western Honshu and the Marine of Japan, which acquire huge amounts of snow during the winter season. It is in this particular area exactly where this story is set.

The story happens during the 1930s. The main protagonist, Shimamura, is actually a wealthy married man via Tokyo whom Kawabata details as a superficial dinette and a playboy. Tired of the location Shimamura uses a train into a rural sizzling spring vacation resort in the depths of the mountain range. On the educate his vision catches an attractive girl, Komako, who is an area geisha through which he engages in an affair with her.

The spring hotel in this book is not really the typical family holiday hotel that Westerners have come to anticipate. Rather the tradition in Japan, as shown with this novel, is the fact hot springtime resorts in the Snow Nation were supposed to cater solitary travelling guys who are in search intended for female friendship. Geishas inside these countryside resorts vary from those who are found in major urban centers, such as Tokyo, where their very own primary part is to give entertainment. Geishas from popular springs were expected to supply a more engaged form of entertainment for their man patrons. Insert quote. The twisted romantic relationship between Shimamura and Komako which is intended to be a relationship is doomed from the extremely start. While Komako is in love with Shimamura he’s not in love with her. He is only fond of her natural beauty and her arts which most certainly several then getting in love.

A telling fine detail of his shallow dilettante and perform boy personality is that he claims to be an expert in European ballet this individual has not when seen a proper ballet efficiency in his lifestyle. His entire knowledge about them is derived from ebooks. This action is a sort of symbolism that shows someone that Shimamura is on purposely removing himself from life and reality.

A second attribute of Japanese culture that includes a heavy presence in this novel is the term the Japanese phone ‘mono zero aware which in turn translates to insert quote. One of this is which our female leading part, Komako, is described as “a particularly poignant symbol of wasted, decaying beauty” here at the beginning of the novel. Besides this many of the natural phenomena, this kind of the slide leaves and the prominent snow, are observed for their fleeting and transient character which usually reflect this idea of love within the book will also die away in the end.