Top Story 3.August 2005

Yasunari Kawabata's Yukiguni still touches

The original edition of Yasunari Kawabata's Yukiguni, (Snow Country) was published in short stories from years 1935-1937. Yukiguni is one of the most famous novel of Kawabata - most of the Japanese know about this book. Its credited again and again as a masterpiece. Indeed, in this book you can find new things every time you read it.

Yukiguni starts with description when train goes through tunnel to west side of Japanese alps, and rolls into the pure white country of snow. Night is crystal clear, stars shining in the distance, snow glittering in the ground. The main character Shimamura is a dance critic, specialized in Western dances, living easy in Tokyo. He inherited big wealth and is mostly just spending it.

Yukiguni is a hot spring resort place. There he meets geisha Komako who came to entertain Shimamura. Personal relations are seen somewhat distant and fleeting. Kawabata describes the friendship between two woman, Komako and Yoko, in beautiful but sensitive manner. The character of Shimamura is seen more like an observer.

There is a film version of Snow Country and it's set in Yuzawa, Niigata Prefecture. The tunnel in the book could be the 970 meters long Shimizu Tunnel that goes through the Japanese Alps. Still nowadays, living in Niigata is sometimes hard. There are landslides and floods. Money is collected all over the Japan to help the life in Niigata.

Yukiguni is in many ways very different from what you might expect from the first chapter. It's very lifelike description of what life was in Japan during that time. It is not romantic in a way most people sometimes expect, but realistic and little a bit cruel. But behind the rough and stark description lies a wonderful world of Japanese aesthetics - the Snow Country.

See also: Yasunari Kawabata, onsen, Spirit of Kyoto and the Modern Life

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