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.
Symbols & Motifs
Mirrors
Mirrors and reflections are Snow Country’s most central symbol, as established during the opening scene on the train. Mirrors have a long heritage in the Japanese literary tradition:
The mirror […] has literary-cultural allusions rooted both in Buddhist and in Shinto thought. Legends of the origins of Japan tell of the three Divine Treasures: Mirror, Sword, and Jewel […] The mirror is thus a link with Japan's ancient gods of sun and moon. In addition, according to Shinto belief the mirror is a sacred embodiment of the kami ("spirit" or "god[s]"). It suggests the unstained mind and is "the source of honesty," hiding nothing, according to generations of scholars and priests. (Petersen, 132)
In Snow Country, mirrors draw upon this tradition, symbolizing both truth and illusion at the same time. On the one hand, the idea of the “strange mirror” is one concocted in Shimamura’s daydreaming fantasy world, an embodiment of the self-imposed illusions that crowd his mind. On the other, the “strange mirror” also reveals the truth of his propensity for fantasy. In this way, the mirror symbol has a dual, self-contradictory meaning. Throughout the rest of the story, Shimamura is reminded of the strange mirror he saw on the train and the fantasy world it transported him to. Even in the highly mundane surface of Komako’s vanity mirror, he finds the exotic fantasies that brought him back to snow country and Komako.
Snow
Symbolically, snow is associated with the purity that Shimamura hopes to find in snow country. In the key chijimi scene, snow is used as a tool for purification, bleaching away the year’s worth of stains on artisanal linens. But the purification that Shimamura seeks exists on a more emotional (or perhaps spiritual) level as he attempts to escape his mundane life in the exciting, exotic world of snow country. The snow is an alluring component of this sense of escape: “[H]e could not believe that the mirror floating over the evening scenery and the other snowy mirror were really works of man. They were part of nature, and part of some distant world” (57-58). Combined with the mirror in this passage, the snow represents Shimamura’s fantasy world and the illusions he pursues in snow country.
Shimamura’s perception of the snow as otherworldly contrasts with the townspeople's pragmatic attitudes toward it; for those who live in the region, snow is a mundane part of their daily lives. There are hints of this difference peppered throughout the text. One morning, Shimamura notices that “[p]robably to keep snow from piling up, the water from the baths was led around the walls of the inn by a makeshift ditch” (48). In moments like this one, the snow is reduced to an engineering problem, an annual survival threat that the local population has become adept at managing. The lofty symbolism of purity collapses when faced with the realities of those who are tasked with making the onsen a pleasurable escape for tourists like Shimamura. As such, snow becomes a litmus test for class, romanticized by wealthy tourists and endured by the workers.
Red and White
Snow Country is rich in its use of color imagery, and in particular, red and white are recurring motifs. White is associated with snow and the powder makeup that Komako uses as a geisha, while red is associated with the sun and the cold-burned skin underneath her makeup. Such a close association with Komako’s body renders the colors with an erotic connotation. In one scene, Shimamura remarks upon the contrast between the white snow and the redness of her skin. Kawabata writes, “The white in the depths of the mirror was the snow, and floating in the middle of it were the woman’s bright red cheeks. There was an indescribably fresh beauty in the contrast” (48). Color is thus the link between the sensual body and the alluring landscape, contributing to the theme of Landscapes as Metaphors for the Body. At the same time, white masking red alludes to the performance of femininity, romance, and sex that Komako must perfect as a geisha and the idealistic version of her that Shimamura has created in his mind. On the surface, snow country’s geishas are perfectly feminine, but this performance conceals their emotional realities and precarious economic situations, reliant as they are on the goodwill of their male customers.
This link is frequently revealed through the lens of a mirror, another of the book’s essential symbols. Here, the colors support the larger mirror metaphor, underscoring their role as motifs. It is also worth noting that entirely different color language is used to describe Shimamura’s skin; he and Komako mention several times that it looks “blue” after shaving. The sensuality indicated by red and white is therefore gendered, contributing to Komako’s performance of femininity.
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By Yasunari Kawabata
