Spring Snow is a subdued masterpiece. It doesn't feel very much like any of the other Japanese novels I’ve read. Mishima doesn’t rely on linguistic austerity like Murakami, and doesn’t need to try hard to create the bleak existentialist mood that permeates many Japanese works. In fact, Spring Snow for the most part feels very Western, which is fitting, because one of the main thematic undercurrents is the influence of westernisation in Meiji’s Japan. I am again struck by how much Japan’s cultural identity is related to its recent history, particularly the forceful transition from the Tokugawa Shogunate to the Meiji Empire. This seems to be an overarching backdrop to many of the Japanese novels that I have read (see Kokoro) – Spring Snow is no exception.
The novel itself is a rather tragic story of an intelligent, cultured, and attractive young man named Kiyoaki, and his affair with his beautiful childhood friend Satoko. It is not, however, a romance novel. I can’t exactly say what it is, but I know that it is lyrical, thoughtful, philosophical at times, but always brimming with beautiful melancholy.
don’t you think that would be marvelous? To take your own ideal and bend the world to it
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Having gained the moon, how much then would he dread life in a world without it.
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He could say: “No, let’s not go back.” But to do that was to reach out and pick up the dice. And his unskilled hand would have frozen at the very touch of them. He was not ready.
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Those who lack imagination have no choice but to base their conclusions on the reality they see around them. But on the other hand, those who are imaginative have a tendency to build fortified castles they have designed themselves, and to seal off every window in them.
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Every show of feeling was now governed with a marvelous economy. If a candle has burned brilliantly but now stands alone in the dark with its flame extinguished, it need no longer fear that its substance will dissolve into hot wax.
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“There’s no doubt that he’s heading straight for tragedy. It will be beautiful, of course, but should he throw his whole life away as a sacrificial offering to such a fleeting beauty—like a bird in flight glimpsed from a window?
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I’ve known supreme happiness, and I’m not greedy enough to want what I have to go on forever. Every dream ends. Wouldn’t it be foolish, knowing that nothing lasts forever, to insist that one has a right to do something that does?
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The path we’re taking is not a road, Kiyo, it’s a pier, and it ends someplace where the sea begins. It can’t be helped.”
Beautiful acceptance of finiteness.
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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 else would emerge as an ally.
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