Snow Country

In Part 2, it quickly becomes clear that the dissolution of Komako and Shimamura’s love affair is inevitable as Kawabata highlights the practical and personal circumstances that will drive them apart. During the opening scenes of Part 2, Kawabata offers three omens: first, the mention of Shimamura’s wife; second, the old Russian peddler; and third, the retiring geisha with whom Komako is friends.

Part 2’s opening sentence introduces the first omen: “It was the egg-laying season for moths, Shimamura’s wife told him as he left Tokyo, and he was not to leave his clothes hanging in the open” (89). This sentence is written in Kawabata’s signature, illusive style but it is a shocking reminder that Shimamura is married and that his romance with Komako is an extramarital affair. There is also a subtle tenderness in Shimamura’s wife’s words to him; she presumably hopes to take care of Shimamura from afar by reminding him to take care of his clothes. This is a rare insight into one of the novel’s most shadowy relationships, but it indicates that Shimamura is not hiding from a loveless marriage in Komako’s arms. On the contrary, his wife’s affection recontextualizes his actions as running toward lust and fantasy at the expense of his preexisting family. It seems that such a frivolous affair has no chance of lasting longer than his stable, caring marriage; Kawabata thus presents his first omen.

Second is the seemingly random appearance of the elderly Russian lady. This is a strange episode in the novel since it is written with such painstaking detail and yet is entirely unrelated to the story’s other events. Kawabata describes the woman as follows: “She appeared to be in her forties. Her face was wrinkled and dirty, but her skin, where it showed at the full throat and beyond, was a pure, glowing white” (90-91). Shimamura is fascinated enough to ask the woman where she is from, and she finds it a perplexing question. Like the European ballet that he studies—and the geishas in snow country—the Russian peddler comes from a faraway land that he does not understand and can easily fantasize about. Indeed, the description of her exposed neck and pure white face mimics the imagery of a geisha’s makeup, making this connection visually explicit. The key difference between the peddler and the other objects of Shimamura’s fascination, however, is that her old age has made her visibly imperfect, obstructing the fantasy. Komako, too, will age one day (she is even aging as the novel progresses), placing an expiration date on Shimamura’s fetishistic vision of her.

One last omen remains: Kikuyu, the retiring geisha. Her deteriorating career trajectory, wrought by her unsustainable relationships with men, provides insight into what is to come for Komako. Komako’s eerie musing about her situation—“Is that what happens when you lose your head over a man? I wonder” (97)—extends Kikuyu’s tragedy to the realm of the universal, suggesting that all geishas place precarious trust in the hands of their male clients. This develops the theme of The Commodification of Female Talent and Affection and brings to mind the power that Shimamura wields over Komako and her fate. Once he leaves her, as he inevitably will, it will no doubt contribute to her ruination in the long run.

Foreshadowing accomplished, doom simmers underneath the text of Part 2 until it makes its explosive reappearance in Komako and Shimamura’s climactic argument. This scene is essential for understanding the novel since one simple moment brings the lovers’ relationship crumbling down, but it is lost in translation:

In Snow Country, for instance, there is no way for the translator to share with Western readers the effect in Japanese of the "masculine" talk of Shimamura and the correctly "feminine" speech forms of Komako […] Nor can the Western reader absorb on the one hand the nuances of Shimamura's shifting from ko (girl) to onna (woman) as he talks to Komako or, on the other, Komako's responses to those nuances (Petersen, 124).

Whereas in English, “woman” would seem to be a more respectful word than “girl,” the reverse is true in the original Japanese text. The subtle shift in language, therefore, does not carry the same punch for English readers who are unfamiliar with the Japanese language. The rich foreshadowing that Kawabata uses throughout Part 2, however, helps to make the deterioration of their relationship in this argument understandable for readers who cannot grasp its linguistic subtleties.