Although it is difficult to access my thoughts from the time of reading, I do have some notes which I'll work through. I like coming back to these posts about the books I liked and found interesting even though reading older posts can invariably draw my attention to all the errors I make. I wish I could write perfect posts. It is a fleeting balance, this striving for the elusive perfect post, living with perpetual drafts, or, to live with the fact that there'll be errors. What then happens is that once I get a broad enough post covering most of what I wish to say, I hit publish. And then, over time, I can get at least the errors in thinking cleaned up, if not all the grammatical ones.
Back to Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata. I stumbled across this book during a recent second-hand book sale. The joy of such book sales is in stumbling across things that you would not normally look for, or aisles you would normally not walk down. Most of the time, the books are clubbed randomly, and the chances of you picking up something new are higher than the usual familiar places to get books.
So with this discovery too. My first read from Kawabata. Yasunari Kawabata was the first Japanese recipient of Nobel for Literature in 1968 (the next was Kazuo Ishiguro recently). In fact, Kawabata acknowledges in his Nobel Banquet speech, that he was the first Oriental recipient after Rabindra Nath Tagore, 55 years before him. Understandably, translations make their way slowly. He was awarded the prize "for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind." Snow Country, which kept evolving through his life (talk about people unhappy with their own writing, or striving for a better way to express what they wish to express), was one of the contributing reasons for the prize.
The book opens up through a tunnel in Japanese snow mountains. And although Shimamura (the protagonist) keeps leaving the place, and heading back to Tokyo, the book stays there, in snow country. White landscape, clean, and fresh, as Komako (the other main character in the book). When the book opens, Komako is a yet to be Geisha. As Shimamura notices in the book, she goes from being a good girl, to a good woman. There is an ideal image that Shimamura seems to be seeking -clean and fresh, untainted feeling - initially in Komako, and then as reflected in Yoko. And there is this recurring theme throughout the book of "wasted effort" or "wasted life". Komako's pursuits, Komako's love, Komako's life, her strivings, all "wasted effort".
But what stood out was in the way that all of them, all the characters, accept their role, their place, and continue with their lives in zen-like ways. In-spite of their 'wasted efforts'. It was interesting to see this view point after the all consuming emotion of Werther in The Sorrows of Young Werther. In Snow Country, there is similar unrequited love, similar gaping holes in hearts, but there is restraint, there is acceptance.
I am not sure I understand the book completely. I liked reading it though. I find it lyrical, poetic in things said, and left unsaid. There is a lot of beauty in the book - in seeing the way light and image is reflected in moving train and the landscape outside, in singing voice, in people, in the silvery grass. Beauty in its sparseness, refrain, fragmentary impressions of the lives of its characters. It provides the cues and then leaves you to imagine and build up the landscape in your mind evoking the snow country, the mountains in different seasons, the beauty of the place. Rustic, old country ways. Peaceful lives.
May be, I do not get the book fully because I don't think I understand the cultural nuances completely. Where rest of the world seems relatively homogeneous, Japan seems to stand out. It seems a magical, different place, with different nuances. Strange, fairy-tale like.Whenever I read about Japan, I find the imagery beautiful, somehow other-worldly, transcendental, and yet, find it difficult to completely reconcile with the way family life, place of women in society works.
While reading this one, I kept thinking of the other books which recreate that fairy-tale strangeness. There is little that I have read on Japan. A couple of books by Kazuo Ishiguro. I haven't read much from Murakami. Just Kafka on the shore. And his NF/personal book on running. And more recently, this short story, Cream. (Set in Kobe. Quite interesting as well as inspiring. Here is the story link). I have read Pico Iyer's "The Lady and the Monk". He recreates the Japan as seen by an outsider. And then David Mitchell. Both people who have not grown up in Japan, but have found, time, love and space to write about it, and to convey its magic. Where The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet was the beginning of modernization, most of the other reads are based in relatively modern times. And then, a little bit of Japan of TV and movies. I recently watched a show called "Midnight Diner" which is a series of short stories anchored around a Tokyo diner and its master.
Perhaps when one reads from a culture far away, one is looking at a multicolored picture with a slightly impaired vision band, and hence one is bound to miss out on seeing completely what is being portrayed.
However I do understand the refrain of "wasted effort". And yet again, seen from a high enough, or far enough vantage point, all our lives and all humanity is a wasted effort. But isn't it the continuous series of "wasted effort" that make life interesting?
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PS: This week's New Yorker (Feb 10, 2019) published this interview with Haruki Murakami. Worth a read. It refers to the magic of Japan.