The poetry of coldness and heat are evocatively captured in Yasunari Kawabata's slim novel, serialised in the late '30s, 'Snow Country', with a doomed yet elegant love affair.
Shimamura is a Japanese man who has come to the hot springs of Yuzawa taking a break from his city affairs. At the hot spring he falls in love with a Geisha, Komako, which is a short, intense, affair but cannot last as Shimaura has to return to the city. In the novel the fleetingness of life is explored, how pleasure comes and goes from moment to moment to how best this fleetingness should be enjoyed.
It is a very Japanese style of story that looks for the importance in the smallness of things, actions and words, and is very restraint on not overwhelming the reader with too many details. The hot springs themselves serve for a unique location where this love story is played out. The steam rising into the cold air is an apt metaphor for what Kawabata looks to describe in 'Snow Country'.
The descriptions are really what makes this book as it sets the tone for the dialogue between Shimamura and Yuzawa. This could be adapted into a stage play as it is all set in one place and having the snow fall around them while they sit in the hot spring comes across as a good image for the fragility of life, the fragility of relationships and the security that comes with these things.
'Snow Country' is the perfect story for our snowy times, to be read with hot water bottle and hot chocolate at hand.
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