Snow Country

Yasunari Kawabata

created: 2024.03.17. 07:08 · modified: 2024.04.09. 15:06 ·  · license

This post was automatically translated and has not yet been reviewed by me. Please read with discretion.

To me, Japan is a country both near and far.

Apart from North Korea, Japan is the country physically closest to ours, and it’s the overseas destination Koreans visit most. Yet despite having traveled abroad quite a bit, I’ve never been there. The main reason has to do with circumstances particular to me that come into play when I travel overseas. But even aside from that, I’ve always felt that Japan and I just wouldn’t click.

Travel is one of my biggest hobbies, but photos of Japan have rarely given me that thrill of wanting to set off. Actually, there is one place I’ve wanted to visit: Sapporo in winter. What interests me there, though, is the snow-covered landscape rather than the people or culture. Japan’s “culture,” it seems, isn’t what draws me in.

Of course, it’s risky to decide something isn’t for you before you’ve properly experienced it—whether it’s a travel destination, a career path, or a person. So if someone asked me to travel around Japan with them, I wouldn’t say no. If that doesn’t happen, I might go alone someday. I have even more reason to give it a chance when I think of China, another country close to home: I thought much more highly of it after visiting than I had before (though I think it helped enormously that on both trips I could travel comfortably and safely under some form of authority). But as things stand, Japan doesn’t feel like a good fit for me.

The same goes when I narrow the subject to Japanese art. Japan’s animation industry occupies a league of its own, and I find that impressive, but apart from Spirited Away, none of its works has truly moved me artistically.

With Japanese literature, it’s even worse: I’ve barely finished any. None that I can remember, at least.

So when I started this book a few days ago, I knew finishing it wouldn’t be easy. It had been in our house for ages, and a few years back I’d read ten or twenty pages before tossing it aside. But I told myself I ought to give Japanese literature a proper chance at least once—and that there must be a reason it had won the Nobel Prize in Literature. I straightened up and got down to reading, telling myself, “If you can’t even finish a book this short, you’re a baka” (oh, Japanese really hits the spot for that).

As expected, it wasn’t easy. It took me over a week to read some 160 pages. Dozens of times I wondered, “What are you trying to say?” My mother, whose chemistry with Japan seems about the same as mine, looked over and told me I wouldn’t know even after I finished it. I tried to dismiss her warning and eventually made it to the final sentence.

And the result… nothing stayed with me. I don’t know what it was trying to say. The casual adultery? Fine. The story is set in a time and culture different from my own, and even something generally considered immoral can have a place in a work of fiction if it conveys a message. But I couldn’t find any message in the story. Should I focus on the prose, then? Judging by the criticism, the book does seem to be famous for its style. As I read, I could tell the author had a distinctive way of telling the story. But rather than moving me, that distinctiveness made me cringe and recoil, much as I do when I watch Choi Jun’s B-Daemyeon Date. Why? Is it because I don’t know Japanese culture? Is it because elements beyond meaning, like rhythm, were lost in translation? Or is it really just not for me?

If it’s the last one, this is a fascinating case. I’m actually a fairly boring person: there are quite a few things most people enjoy that I don’t, like drinking coffee or alcohol, or rooting for a sports team. I don’t enjoy those things, but I understand why other people do. What makes Snow Country different is that I can’t even see why someone would like it. People who like Snow Country are harder to find than Hanwha Eagles fans or soju lovers, but the fact that it won the Nobel Prize in Literature must mean there are plenty of them—even outside Japan, among people who don’t speak Japanese. So if anyone reading this genuinely enjoyed Snow Country, I hope you’ll strike up a conversation and enlighten me. Help me understand what on earth this world is all about.

It’s a little disappointing that, after writing such a long book review for the first time in ages, all I’ve really said is “I don’t think it’s for me.” But that’s honestly how I felt.

Below is a YouTube video I’d come across before that came to mind while I was wondering whether I couldn’t enjoy Snow Country because I don’t speak Japanese and couldn’t hear the rhythm of its language. The bigger the circle of the known, the greater the contact with the unknown. The speaker says that the more languages they learn, the sadder they feel thinking about how many masterpieces exist in languages they’ll never learn in their lifetime. It sounds a bit like a humblebrag, but I can relate to it, too.