37 pages • 1 hour read
Yasunari KawabataSnow Country
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1937A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Pages 39-88Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Pages 39-88 Summary
Returning to the present day, Shimamura reassures Komako that he could not possibly have been laughing at her during their last conversation, and he has returned to snow country to spend time with her. Komako is appeased by his words and informs him that she has been counting the days they’ve been separated in her diary. Shimamura is surprised that she keeps a diary and thinks to himself that it is a pointless exercise because she only records summaries of novels that she has read. He realizes that she has given up her dreams of living a more meaningful life outside of snow country.
After a romantic encounter that evening, he awakens in the morning to the sound of Komako tying her obi (a sash or belt used to tie a kimono). She returns home, leaving him to his devices that day, but he happens to walk by her in town while she socializes with the other geishas. She scolds him for embarrassing her in front of her colleagues, but he ignores her discomfort and asks her about her living situation in Yukio’s home as a roundabout way of learning more about Yoko. She confirms that Yukio is sick but bristles at his fixation on Yoko. She begrudgingly invites him into their home, and inside, they converse in her room, which previously was used for raising silkworms. They hear Yoko enter the house and ask if she can step over Komako’s samisen (a three-stringed instrument used in traditional Japanese music), which has been left by the door. Shimamura is once again transfixed by Yoko, especially as she glances at him when passing by in the hallway.
After leaving Yukio’s house, Shimamura goes to an appointment with a local masseuse nearby. The masseuse, an older lady from town, informs him that there is a rumor that Komako was once engaged to Yukio, but she was forced to begin working as a geisha when he fell ill. Yoko took her place as Yukio’s lover, and the two women have presumably been rivals ever since. Shimamura chooses to believe the masseuse, even though he finds the mundanity of such gossip difficult to swallow. Back at the inn, Komako is upset when he confronts her with the rumor and denies ever having been engaged to Yukio: “There does seem to have been a time when his mother thought it would be a good idea for us to get married. […] Both of us knew in a vague sort of way what was on her mind, but it went no farther” (67). Shimamura presses her further, wondering why she is spending so much time away from her ex-fiancé if he is dying, and she tells him to stop worrying about Yukio since his death is imminent.
Komako and Shimamura spend the rest of their time together pleasantly; he listens to her playing the samisen and watches her fondly while she dotes on the innkeeper’s daughter, Kimi. The night before he returns to Tokyo, Komako insists that they walk to the station together to prepare for his departure. She begs him to return home but is dismayed when he confirms that he plans on departing the next day. When the time comes for him to leave, he overhears Komako negotiating the price of her services with the innkeeper. They walk back to the station together, and Komako tells him about how deep the snow gets in the winter.
Yoko arrives at the station, visibly distraught, and tells Komako that she must hurry back home because Yukio is about to die. Komako refuses to return before seeing Shimamura off. Desperate, Yoko begs Shimamura to give Komako permission to go see Yukio. Shimamura is eager to oblige, but Komako is resolute that she will not go to Yukio. As his train pulls away from the station, Shimamura watches Komako’s face disappear and gets lost in the same mirror world that he experienced on his train into snow country. He is once again sharing a car with a couple whom he presumes are longtime lovers, but he is taken aback when the man leaves the woman at a seemingly random stop. The realization that the couple are practically strangers makes him “want to weep” (87).
Part 1, Pages 39-88 Analysis
The love triangle between Komako, Yoko, and Yukio, which eventually becomes a love triangle with Shimamura when Yukio dies, is one of the novel’s driving narrative forces even though it is never fully explained. Kawabata leaves lingering questions about whether Komako was ever actually engaged to Yukio and if Komako and Yoko despise each other as much as Shimamura thinks that they do. Nevertheless, once Shimamura’s motivation is revealed—his unyielding desire to get closer to Yoko—his actions throughout this portion of the novel begin to make themselves clear. He pushes Komako for an invitation to Yukio’s home because he knows that Yoko also lives there, gossips with the masseuse because he craves information about Yoko’s romantic status, and supports Yoko when she is upset with Komako at the train station. As ever, the key to understanding the story is hidden in the subtext.
Even though Shimamura’s ulterior motives for encouraging Komako to listen to Yoko at the train station are clear, Komako’s refusal to see Yukio on his deathbed is a moment of negative characterization in the novel. In this light, Shimamura appears to be a voice of reason as he tries to convince Komako to leave the station: “Do you think it’s right not to say good-by to the man you yourself said was on the very first page of the very first volume of your diary? This is the very last page of his” (84). This comparison between a diary and a lifetime is notable because previously, Shimamura thought of Komako’s diary in a very demeaning light, thinking of it as a pointless use of her time. Here, however, the metaphor invests the diary with immense meaning, leaving room for two interpretations: Either Shimamura has come around to Komako’s way of understanding the diary, or he knows that bringing up the diary will appeal to her pathos and potentially convince her to do what Yoko wants.
Throughout the novel, these two motivational pulls tear Shimamura apart until it is no longer sustainable. On the one hand, there is his undeniable need to impress Yoko, his crush. On the other hand, his real-life relationship with Komako necessitates that he extend her some form of empathy. In most cases, such as the scene at the train station, he responds to this conflict so ambiguously that it is difficult to ascertain which side he is giving in to. Another scene in which this occurs is during his appointment with the masseuse. He unabashedly engages in gossip with the masseuse, eager to get information about Yoko and Komako out of her and egging her on with successive questions: “Komako, you say? [...] She was engaged to him?” (61). Though one might interpret this as an empathetic attempt to understand his romantic partner, it is eventually made clear that Komako finds such gossip harmful, and she is dismayed to find that Shimamura has engaged in it. Once again, Shimamura’s motivations are more self-serving than anything else.
Ultimately, Shimamura’s irrepressible urges to appease his desires for both Komako and Yoko border on the bodily, contributing to the book’s overarching theme of Landscapes as Metaphors for the Body. In particular, the snow’s ability to obscure reality, as perceived both by Shimamura and the townspeople, works in tandem with Shimamura’s inability to come to terms with the reality of his romantic circumstances. One day, he observes that “[t]he snow on the distant mountains was soft and creamy, as if veiled in a faint smoke” (66). He is unable to pinpoint it, but there is something essential in the landscape that facilitates his fantasies and, therefore, his actions while in snow country. Torn in two different directions by two women, neither of whom he will ever be able to have, Shimamura takes the region’s mystifying terrain as permission to be mystifying himself. Komako and Yoko are (intentionally) unable to pinpoint the reasoning behind his actions, such that is unclear to all involved exactly how Shimamura wants the story to end.
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