Spring Snow

Beautiful writing, despite a surprising lack of ambiguity, maybe due to the translation, more probably as a result of the author's love of aristocracy which I found hard at times to square with my own loathing for such unearned privilege. I liked the gear change in the final third, impressive technical and dramatic impact.

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 show more 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. show less

Jefferson's first day of school was a Wednesday, and I of course had a brain meltdown and barely got us out the door in time, so certainly didn't have a lunch packed or a book to read while I hung out in Mecosta and waited for time to pick him up. Plus, on Wednesdays, the library doesn't open until 1:00 (preschool starts at 11:30), but happily the used bookstore was open.

Spring Snow was the first book to catch my eye on entering the store. I suspected at the time and have since confirmed that it sounded so familiar because it was on Bookslut's top 100 books of the 20th century list. And I'm happy to say after reading it I feel it definitely deserves its spot on that list. I loved this book from beginning to end.

Set in early 20th century show more Japan, this story plays out against a backdrop of a country in flux -- where families with money and families with rank have access to different kinds of power. Where old world elegance clashes with those emulating the tastes and values of the west.

In addition to this intriguing glance into a foreign culture, are the more familiar forms of a young man's coming of age and the tragic tale of a forbidden romance. But almost all of these things seem secondary to the languid, hypnotizing style with which the story is told. One never stops to wonder how the recitation of a dream or a religious discussion or a rumination on law moves the story forward, because every word just seems to draw the reader further into the dream that is this book.

I can hardly recommend this book highly enough. show less

I don't know if I'm too impressionable or if every book I read is, as a matter of fact, the most beautiful book I've ever read! Like Wagner, Mishima is an artist of supremely weird personal politics and yet capable of unprecedented scale, scope, and majesty. What would, in other hands, be a fairly predictable story of star-crossed lovers here plays out in cinemascope extravagance, with a cast of very complicated characters whose motives are impossibly bound with their principles, politics, aesthetics, etc. This is a coming of age story where teenage boys discuss the transmigration of souls and true love is an endurance test of mutual manipulation. How could a book determined to end in defeat make for such suspenseful reading? How could show more such bad behavior and self-interest endear itself so sweetly? Who knows. "The path we're taking is not a road, Kiyo, it's a pier, and it ends someplace where the sea begins." Recommended for people with a high tolerance for the grandiose. show less

Too, too exquisite, Kiyoaki! Actions have consequences, Kiyoaki! Don't you know you're in a novel, Kiyoaki? Heed the omens!

I wanted to admonish Kiyoaki many times reading this book. But he wouldn't have listened: his whole life is nothing but carte blanche, which makes it all the more poignant when he decides to throw it away on a gesture--he doesn't know what he has. Born to the Marquis and -ise Matsugae, a second-generation family of Taisho-era nouveaux riches (Kiyo's grandfather was ennobled by the Meiji emperor for his services to the creation of modern Japan), he is in love with himself and finds little else in this vale of edium to turn him on, with the exception of Satoko, the daughter of a proper noble, who maddens him. In his show more teenagery way he doesn't know if he wants to set her on fire or just love her so hard he bursts into flames himself.

So instead there's petty lies and self-defensive sneering and Genjiesque fuckery with letters, with the result that Satoko ends up betrothed to a member of the Imperial Family (as it should be, because the decadent nobility are never any match for the rude energy of the up-and-comers: Kiyoaki destroys Ayakura Satoko with the ease of Oda Nobunaga defeating Asakura Yoshikage at Rokubou Kenshouji. And from then on it's a death spiral, black-eyed ravens.

To Kiyo's credit, he is possessed of a sensitive awareness and a mighty palette of emotions on that Bovarian, Proustian axis between ennui and exultation. You get the feeling the author is trying to tell us a little bushido would've made him into a weapon of swift death, a bishie heartbreaker, if only it weren't the Taisho era, font of corruption. To Mishima's credit, the novel has crystalline bits of human insight, natural beauty, symbolic fearsomeness. Sometimes it has to melt into turgidity and reform.

Both Kiyo and, especially, Satoko, come out quite unbearably beautiful in their utter unawareness that their moth-wings are already burning. All the young people in fact--the subtle, sincere, resolved Honda; the lithe, easeful, devout Thai princes; even minor characters like Mine who gives of her body, all come across as magnificent in their joys and foibles. Spring snow indeed, blighting persimmons left on the tree. Some of the older characters are admirable in their way--resourceful, cultivated, lore-wise--but none of them have that wild charisma. You can see why Mishima did what he did with his samurai sword, even if it was flawed in the execution.

I see this as a novel of youthful beauty, young love, which is so different from old love as to demand a different word entirely, young death, and a look through the keyhole into a historical time and place whose preoccupations Mishima seems to evoke so easily it's like he could step back and forth at will. It's good Kiyoaki went when he did, because his presence would have become an oppression in the subsequent books of this tetralogy, the airsucking presence of the born protagonist who can't imagine the world without him. show less

'Spring Snow' took quite a while to absorb me. The writing is beautiful and the atmosphere of Japan in 1912 very vivid. The difficulty, though, was that the main character Kiyoaki failed to attract my sympathy. He has been brought up with extreme refinement and delicacy, without responsibilities or pressures. As a result he has become deeply self-involved and only interested in his own internal life. Indeed, he seems to be wholly emotionally masochistic, determined to wallow in heartbreak and frustration for its own sake. It is as if the lack of strong emotion and challenges in his life drive him to manufacture his own. This is most emphatically shown by his interest in pursuing a woman he's known from childhood only awakening once she show more seemingly becomes unavailable.

Whilst this is interesting to observe, it is also frustrating. Kiyoaki's lassitude weighs upon the narrative, as I'm sure it is intended to. I felt more enthusiasm when Mishima's focus temporarily shifted to Honda, Satoko, and, especially, Tadeshina the maid (who gave me the impression of being the character with the most agency and power). That said, I couldn't help but appreciate the extreme non-involvement philosophy of Satoko's father, generally referred to as the Count:

'Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation and someone would emerge as an ally.'

That seems like the most elegant possible mode of expressing, 'Can't someone else do it?' Snippets like that greatly pleased me, but for the most part I found this novel's atmosphere stifling thanks to to Kioaki's point of view. Like him, it is beautiful but frustratingly blinkered. Mishima is a wonderful writer, though, and I intend to read more by him. show less

I didn't know what to expect with this book. It turned out to be beautiful and sad. Set at the transition from Meiji to Taisho, with Japan still a contradiction of feudal tradition and modernity, it explores the love affair of two aristocratic young adults and the consequences of forbidden love. The observance of social niceties contrasts with the passionate yearning for freedom, with the way of life of the old guard slowly giving way to the Westernised ways of the new rich. As much as it's a commentary on society, though, it's an old fashioned love story in the mould of Abelard and Héloise or Romeo and Juliet. Mishima's prose is delicately elegant. I was carried along effortlessly by it.