Why do we never talk about this masterpiece, /lit/?

I don't have much to say about it.

There's not much to it. People call it "comfy" which I guess is apt if you mean dull and unremarkable.

>>9383594
It has one of the best opening scenes of everything I've ever read.

>>9383932

Yeah, I really didn't like it. Seemed like a boring romance to me.

>>9383594
Because it's all right there in the narrative, what is there to break down.

I preferred Thosuand Cranes but some parts of Snow Country really stuck with me. Like that image of the body falling through the fire perfectly horizontally.

More than anything it's just a well written short novel. It's not incredible to analyze however.
>>9384112 is also correct

I really do love Kawabata. The only good thing about Mishima was introducing me to him. I really like how subtle Kawabata is in his novels. Asides from the very start with him spending a couple of pages describing the reflection on an eye, and the very end where the character sees the milky way in a very conscious mono no ware moment, the whole novels ideas a implicit and hidden behind a veil of heavy aestheticism.

I can understand why most Kawabata novels are about impossible love. It's a wonderful way to throw two characters together in a way that allows him to be very concise about everything he does. In the one hundred pages of Snow Country we see the longing of each character: their self denial, the change of their characters as shown through the events and memories of the novel, but most importantly we see that their love for each other is ultimately a love for a certain sort of ennui, which is why their love must be impossible. All of this is done through the explicit plots of the book which leaves him with just enough space to enrich the world with additional details that are easy to miss. In the Novel Shimamura has an interest in ballet, an art form he has never seen, never will, that has nothing to do with his cultural background or economic class. This little detail which is quietly dropped into the novel shows his lack of grounding in his own culture, his longing for things he can't have (which is why he will never see a ballet because then his interest in them would die), and his inability to accept what he has in front of him.

However asides from the explicit elements their are the implicit elements. Komako is a sort of a symbol for a traditional, Japanese way of living, but one that is falling apart, where Shimamura is adrift and rootless, the consequence of his westernisation. His desire for Komako and the folky spa town is shown to be akin to his desire for ballet, not a genuine attempt of finding a way to exist but merely a fetishisation for something exotic to be had for a time.

What I find amazing is his ability to do all of this and a lot more in just over one hundred pages, and to do it in a way which never feels forced or self important. Kawabata is a master stylist and through his style he creates an aestheticised lens allowing us to engage with everything from a distance, so that we can see this impossible love and be in love with it without negativity, turning impossible love into an actual contemplation of that love where we are ourselves are in that love.
And all of that in one hundred pages of tight, beautiful prose.

>>9383594
Never even knew of this, still reading Genji. Thanks for letting me know.

i like when he's looking at someone in the reflection of a dark train window

>>9383594
This is a book that's both short and tedious. At least 3/4 of the book consists of identical scenes of Komako coming to Shimamura's room uninvited and/or at an odd hour, often drunk, immediately announcing that she will leave, asking for a glass of water, announcing that she will leave, worrying aloud about her reputation, announcing that she will leave, lolling around for a while, getting angry at Shimamura for some perceived insult, and announcing that she will leave. She only actually leaves about 1/4 of the time. Meanwhile, while she's behaving all How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Shimamura is noting how the whiteness of her skin is like the whiteness of the snow, or the redness of her cheek is like the redness of a persimmon, or how the redness of her cheek in the whiteness of her face is like the redness of the rising sun in the whiteness of a bleached out sky. At one point he briefly interrupts thinking about what else is red and white to consider that should maybe start doing something useful with his life, which was the only time I felt the slightest sympathy for him. There's also another character, Yoko, who has an unexplained history with Komako, but it was all so needlessly enigmatic and I was fresh out of apathy.

>the lack of aesthetic sensibility in this thread

I guess that you fuckers only like flashy prose.

The ending was so good. Jap novels have amazing endings most of the time in my experience