Snow Country

Kawabata later wrote that he could not finish his manuscript by the submission deadline of this literary journal, and decided to keep writing and submit a second version of this segment, titled Shiroi Asa no Kagami ("Mirror of a White Morning") to the general-interest magazine Kaizō several days later.

Kawabata continued to write about the characters, and five more segments were published over the next years: Monogatari ("Story" or "Tale") and Toro ("Futile Efforts") appeared in the journal Nihon Hyoron in the November and December 1935 issues; Kaya no Hana ("Miscanthus Flower") appeared in Chuo Koron August 1936; Hi no Makura ("Pillow of Fire") in Bungeishunjū October 1936; and Temariuta ("Handball Song") was published in Kaizō May 1937.

He combined these segments into a "complete" Snow Country, making numerous changes to the texts as they appeared in the journals, which was published in June 1937.

A few months before his death in 1972, he wrote an abbreviated version of the work, which he titled "Gleanings from Snow Country", that shortened the novel to a few spare pages, a length that placed it among his Palm-of-the-Hand Stories, a form to which Kawabata devoted particular attention for more than 50 years.

[5] Snow Country is a stark tale of a love affair between a Tokyo dilettante and a provincial geisha that takes place in the remote hot spring (onsen) town of Yuzawa.

During the train ride, he observes a young woman (who is later revealed as Yoko) caring for a sickly man (named Yukio).

Snow Country was written during a period of Japanese militarism, and a number of modern inventions can be seen in the novel, which include a train, a snowplow, and an electric avalanche warning system.

[8] This novel, like others Kawabata wrote, vividly depicts the psychic cost of aesthetic appreciation, as well as its effect on minds susceptible to beauty.

Furthermore, this beauty makes him oblivious to the world around him (e.g., after observing Yoko's eyes in the train or seeing the Milky Way during the fire at the end of the novel).

[10] Edward Seidensticker, noted scholar of Japanese literature whose English translation of the novel was published in 1956, described the work as "perhaps Kawabata's masterpiece."