Spring Snow [Paperback]

Yukio Mishima (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 1984

Tokyo, 1912. The closed world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders - rich provincial familes, 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 Satoko, observed from the sidelines by his devoted friend Honda. When Satoko is engaged to a royal prince, Kiyoaki realises the magnitude of his passion.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Mishima is like Stendhal in his precise psychological analyses, like Dostoevsky in his explorations of darkly destructive personalities."

-- Christian Science Monitor

"[The Sea of Fertility] is a literary legacy on the scale of Proust's."

-- National Review

Translated from the Japanese by Michael Gallagher --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Language Notes

Text: English, Japanese (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: Pocket; 2nd edition (July 3, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671540629
• ISBN-13: 978-0671540623
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,744,753 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

101 of 112 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read at once., May 29, 2002

By 

Angry Mofo "angrymofo" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spring Snow (Paperback)

I've only read two Mishima books so far, am reading a third now, and intend to get through 'em all. Alas, I fear that none will be as good as the first one I read - Spring Snow. I really didn't think people could still write like this in the 20th century. I mean, star-crossed, tragic love was an old subject by the time Shakespeare got to it - what made Mishima think he could write something new about it hundreds of years later? But something did, and I'm glad it did. For while there is a [very interesting] historical context to Spring Snow (tell me, what other book paints such a visceral portrait of early 20th century Japan?), the focus is on the love story. And no one writes love stories like Yukio Mishima. Somehow, it manages to avoid the gaping pitfalls of sentimentalism and melodrama, creating instead a world of great beauty and fragility that I was loath to leave when the book drew to its close.

If you read a biography of Mishima, you will likely find mountains of speculation concerning his various eccentricities (and that word is putting is nicely, methinks). Some will accuse him of right-wingery, others will rant about his "nationalism," etc. etc. etc. But I think that none of that applies. He was in no way a political person, just a hopelessly deluded romantic who still believed that romantic ideals had any place in modern society. This he applied to politics as well as to everything else. Spring Snow, fortunately, contains no politics, concentrating instead on romantic ideals as applied to the personal. The result is something that, while being Japanese through and through, is accessible to anyone. This book is worth reading for the marvelously poetic descriptions alone. I shan't say that it will "change your life," since that's cliche and more often than not utterly wrong, but I daresay that you will have an indelible impression made upon your mind. At first, you may not notice it, but as time passes, you will find that you remember large parts of Spring Snow on countless occasions, and you will find yourself recalling parts of it as examples of great beauty and purity, and reflexively applying them to your own life. And then you will cheer Mishima as quite possibly the last romantic on Earth. That is exactly what happened to me.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quietly Disturbing, May 27, 2000

By 

Calix F Eden (York, Moscow) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spring Snow (Paperback)

Mishima has the ability to get underneath the skin of his readers. What seems like an innocent and harmless story of adolescence gradually becomes one of fundamental importance. In my view, this is the most brilliant of the three Mishima novels I have read. It is a masterpiece which leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. None of Mishima's characters seem happy and even the 'heroes' are ambiguous, despite the fact that many of them are perfect in physical terms. We have to judge the character for ourselves without help, rather like a film without background music. There is a strong homo-erotic undercurrent in Mishima's work, even though the central relationship in this novel is heterosexual. The focal character, Kiyoaki, seems to be massochistic and derives a form of pleasure from his own destruction.

I would strongly recommend anyone who is interested in the complexities of relationships and the specific cultural life of Japan to read this novel. Above all, it should be read for the intricacy and skill of its literature.

28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, moving, delicate, and unforgettable., July 9, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Spring Snow (Paperback)

Spring Snow is a dramatic, moving work that helps codify Mishima's tetralogy, the Sea of Fertility, as perhaps the 20th century's greatest magnum opus. Mishima writes in a delicately impressionistic style, employing similes and metaphors of subtle, almost fragile beauty, that create a vivid and harmonic unity that simply inspire awe. Like Dante, he moves the reader's spirit as his characters spirits evolve. Like Dostoyevsky, he plunges relentlessly into the dark caprices of the mind. Like Milton, his word choice was so perfect that I put down the Sea of Fertility wishing that I had written it myself.

Spring Snow, the first installment of the cycle, stands very well on its own (though its ultimate meaning can only be appreciated as the tetralogy is continued). It takes place early in 20th century Japan, a time of transition in which Japan's decreased isolation leads to a Westernization that ultimately proves Spring Snow to be an elegy for the samurai tradition. It is also a wonderful and tragic love story -- far more convincing than Romeo and Juliet -- in which an impossible and doomed love threatens the young protagonists whose wealthy families adjust to the changing sociopolitical climate of Japan.

The other three books in the cycle are (in order):

'Runaway Horses,' 'The Temple of Dawn,' and 'The Decay of the Angel'