Snow Country

The first Japanese author to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, Yasunari Kawabata was born in Osaka in 1899. His childhood was defined by familial tragedy; his parents died when he was four years old, his older sister when he was 11, his paternal grandmother when he was seven, and his paternal grandfather when he was 15. Amid this torrent of loss, Kawabata threw himself into his literature studies. He attended Tokyo Imperial University (later called the University of Tokyo), where he was responsible for reviving its defunct literary magazine, Shin-shichō. By the time he was 25, Kawabata entrenched himself in Japan’s most cutting-edge literary circles. He helped found Bungei Jidai, a journal aimed at ushering in a movement of “new impressions” in Japanese literature.

Despite Kawabata’s forward-thinking approach to writing, his work remained deeply rooted in his country’s centuries-old literary traditions. As Gwenn Boardman Petersen writes, Kawabata “repeatedly [spoke] of his intention: to preserve the ‘traditional taste,’ that is, the poetic sense, of Japan” (Boardman Petersen, Gwenn. The Moon in the Water: Understanding Tanizaki, Kawabata, and Mishima. University of Hawai’i Press, 1979). In Snow Country, this “traditional taste” emerges vividly in the particular imagery he utilizes, and his tendency to place meaning in the text’s negative spaces; what goes unsaid is very frequently more important than what is said.