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Loading... Spring Snow (The Sea of Fertility) (original 1967; edition 1968)by Yukio Mishima
Work InformationSpring Snow by Yukio Mishima (1967)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This book was my introduction to the works of Mishima and while I had a very weird enjoyment of this novel, I sort of wish I'd started with something else of his that's maybe shorter or focuses more on one idea so I could feel him out better. But that's just a personal preference and doesn't take away from 'Spring Snow' itself. Even though I had a great dislike of the MC, my boy Kiyoaki, for his fickle, childish, and borderline narcissistic attitudes he displays at the beginning (and then passionate delusions at the end), I was super invested in his story and how he suffers, (which I knew he would considering the gloomy foreshadowing is extremely heavy - even without my glasses I would've seen it coming a mile away). Each theme of the book is explored deeply and is woven into a complex webbing where each point is interconnected. It's quite beautifully done. There's the transition of boyhood into manhood (or the perception of, and how it falters), the changing of an era and being born during in-between times, that there are people born now who fit better into the era of the past and those born who fit into an era to come, that passion is the epitome of youth and of life - that once it's realized and passes, the best part of life is now behind you. I did have a good time reading about mens' nipples and chest hair, though, I've been told this is typical for Mishima and I have to say I appreciate it.
"a work of brilliant historical coloring and erotic introspection" "we read 'Spring Snow' for its marvelous incidentals, graphic and philosophic, and for its scene-gazing" "The point here is that Mishima seems to share many Western illusions about not only Japan, but all of Asia" [...] "an unconvincing movie scenario portrait of Japan in the 1910s" [...] "Mishima's diction is self-consciously intellectual; his prose is filled with words drawn from the whole history of the Japanese language used in an effort to enrich the texture of his diction" [...] "However the translation we are offered of the first two volumes is in quite pedestrian English." A novel with the perfect beauty of a Japanese garden... a classic of Japanese literature. Is contained in
Tokyo, 1912. The closed world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders - rich provincial families, a new and powerful political and social elite. Kiyoaki has been raised among the elegant Ayakura family - members of the waning aristocracy - but he is not one of them. Coming of age, he is caught up in the tensions between old and new, and his feelings for the exquisite, spirited Sakoto, observed from the sidelines by his devoted friend Honda. When Sakoto is engaged to a royal prince, Kiyoaki realises the magnitude of his passion. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)895.635Literature Literature of other languages Asian (east and south east) languages Japanese Japanese fiction 1945–2000LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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- contemplating why so many authors set their stories amongst the upper class, in this case quasi royalty. Intended to make the story less mundane by removing all the economic barriers and inconveniences faced by normal people? Easy to write when characters don’t have to go to work or worry about the financial effects of chasing your beloved across the country?
- Mishima gives 18-19 year old boy too much credit here, find it hard to believe that Honda would be reflecting on medieval European law, or the Siamese princes giving lectures on Buddhism
- reading in translation of course, but a lot of the language seemed so overwrought and the description tedious. I’m all for long passages “about nothing” where we can simply appreciate the poésie of the language but do normal people really think in term of the heady metaphors Mishima ascribes to them here? Not in my experience, though I haven’t spent much time with early 20th century aristocrats either ( )