[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-143726-en":3,"doc-seo-143726-105":31,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":92},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":21,"is_downloadable":21,"audit_status":21,"page_count":22,"language":23,"language_code":24,"site_id":25,"html_lang":24,"table_of_contents":26,"faqs":27,"seo_title":28,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":29,"read_time":30},143726,7971461740909,"Levi","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_155a257f0dc6eb9ab79c44ca47cae57d",2,"Literature","Snow Country - Introduction","A winter landscape rooted in Japan Sea snow becomes a stage for an intimate, melancholic portrait of love and distance in Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country. The introduction frames “snow country” as the region west of Japan’s central mountain range and explores the hot-spring world where geisha navigate stigma, transience, and decaying beauty. It traces Kawabata’s literary lineage and explains how haiku-like terseness and sensory mingling shape the novel’s emotional cold loneliness.","SNOW COUNTRY  \nALSO BY YASUNAR I KAWA BATA  \n*  \nThousand Cranes (1959)* The Sound of the Mountain (1970)* The Master of Go (1972)* Beauty and Sadness (1975)*  \nAVAILABLE IN PERIGEE BOOKS EDITIONS  \nSNOW COUNTRY  \nYASUNARI KAWABATA Translated from the Japanese by  \nEDWARD G. SEIDENSTICKER  \nA WIDEVIEW/PERIGEE BOOK  \nPerigee Books are published by  \nG. P. Putnam's Sons  \n200 Madison Avenue New York, N.Y. 10016  \nCopyright© 1957 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. Published simultaneously in Canada by Academic Press Canada Limited, Toronto.  \nThis is an authorized reprint of a hardcover edition  \noriginally published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Originally published in Japanese as Yukiguni. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Kawabata, Yasunari, 1899-1972.  \nSnow country.  \nTranslation of Yukiguni.  \nOriginally published by Knopf, New York.  \nI. Title.  \nPL832.A9Y813 1981 895.6'34 80-39979 ISBN 0-399-50525-3  \nI\u003C irst Perigee Printing, 1981 Sixth Impression  \nin the United States of America  \nINTRODUCTION  \nIN THE WINTER, cold winds blow down from Siberia, pick up moisture over the Japan Sea, and drop it as snow when they strike the mountains of Japan. The west coast of the main island of Japan is probably for its latitude (roughly, from Cape Hatteras to New York, or from Spanish Morocco to Barcelona) the snowiest region in the world. From December to April or May only the railroads are open, and the snow in the mountains is sometimes as much as fifteen feet deep.  \nThe expression \"snow country,\" then, does mot mean simply country where snow falls. It means very specifically the part of the main island that lies west of the central mountain range. It suggests long, gray winters, tunnels under the snow, dark houses with rafters black from the smoke of winter  \n. v .  \nIntroduction  \nfires-and perhaps chilblains, or, to the more imaginative, life divorced from time through the long snowbound months.  \nThe hot springs, one of which is the locale of Snow Country, also have a peculiarly Japanese significance. The Japanese seldom goes to a hot spring for his health, and he never goes for \"the season,\" as people once went to Bath or Saratoga. He may ski or view maple leaves or cherry blossoms, but his wife is usually not with him. The special delights of the hot spring are for the unaccompanied gentleman. No prosperous hot spring is without its geisha and its compliant hotel maids.  \nIf the hot-spring geisha is not a social outcast, she is perilously near being one. The city geisha may become a celebrated musician or dancer, apolitical intriguer, even a dispenser of patronage. The hot-spring geisha must go on entertaining week-end guests, and the pretense that she is an artist and not a prostitute is often a thin one indeed. It is true that she sometimes marries an old guest, or persua\u003Cies him to open a restaurant for her ; but the possibility that she will drift from one hot spring to another, more unwanted with each change, makes her a particularly poignant symbol of wasted, decaying beauty.  \nIt is not by chance that Kawabata Yasunari has chosen a hot-spring geisha for the heroine and the  \nIntroduction  \ndark snow country for the setting of this novel. Darkness and wasted beauty run like a ground bass through his major work, and in Snow Country we perhaps ' feel most strongly the cold loneliness of the Kawahara world.  \nKawahara was born near Osaka in 1899 and was orphaned at the age of two. His short stories began to attract attention soon after his graduation from Tokyo Imperial University. He presently became a leading figure in the lyrical school that offered the chief opposition to the proletarian literature of the late twenties. Snow Country was begun in 1934 and published piecemeal between 1935 and 1937. In 1947 a final installment was added, and the novel completed as it stands today. Kawahara has been put, I think rightl","cbCaipwDgIX35K3b","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaipwDgIX35K3b","pdf",1976841,6,1,189,"English","en",105,"# Introduction\n## The meaning of “snow country”\n## Hot springs and the hot-spring geisha\n## Kawabata’s origins and haiku influence\n## Theme, characters, and emotional distance","[{\"question\":\"What does “snow country” refer to in this introduction?\",\"answer\":\"It refers specifically to the part of Japan’s main island west of the central mountain range, associated with long gray winters and heavy snowfall.\"},{\"question\":\"Why is the hot-spring geisha portrayed as especially poignant?\",\"answer\":\"Her role requires entertaining guests while masking social stigma, and the likelihood of moving from one hot spring to another symbolizes wasted, decaying beauty.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the introduction connect haiku style to the novel’s technique?\",\"answer\":\"It argues that haiku’s terseness and focus on sudden awareness mirrors how the novelist crafts the narrative like brief flashes, heavily blending sensory impressions.\"}]","Snow Country - Introduction | PDF",1787696489,291,{"code":4,"msg":32,"data":33},"ok",{"site_id":25,"language":24,"slug":34,"title":13,"keywords":35,"description":14,"schema_data":36,"social_meta":87,"head_meta":89,"extra_data":91,"updated_unix":29},"snow-country-introduction","",{"@graph":37,"@context":86},[38,54,69],{"@type":39,"itemListElement":40},"BreadcrumbList",[41,45,48,51],{"item":42,"name":43,"@type":44,"position":21},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":46,"name":47,"@type":44,"position":11},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",{"item":49,"name":12,"@type":44,"position":50},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":52,"name":13,"@type":44,"position":53},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/snow-country-introduction/143726/",4,{"url":52,"name":13,"@type":55,"author":56,"headline":13,"publisher":58,"fileFormat":61,"inLanguage":24,"description":14,"dateModified":62,"datePublished":63,"encodingFormat":61,"isAccessibleForFree":64,"interactionStatistic":65},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":57},"Person",{"url":42,"name":59,"@type":60},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-09-03","2026-08-25",true,{"@type":66,"interactionType":67,"userInteractionCount":20},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":68},"ViewAction",{"@type":70,"mainEntity":71},"FAQPage",[72,78,82],{"name":73,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":75},"What does “snow country” refer to in this introduction?","Question",{"text":76,"@type":77},"It refers specifically to the part of Japan’s main island west of the central mountain range, associated with long gray winters and heavy snowfall.","Answer",{"name":79,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":80},"Why is the hot-spring geisha portrayed as especially poignant?",{"text":81,"@type":77},"Her role requires entertaining guests while masking social stigma, and the likelihood of moving from one hot spring to another symbolizes wasted, decaying beauty.",{"name":83,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":84},"How does the introduction connect haiku style to the novel’s technique?",{"text":85,"@type":77},"It argues that haiku’s terseness and focus on sudden awareness mirrors how the novelist crafts the narrative like brief flashes, heavily blending sensory impressions.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":52,"og:type":88,"og:title":13,"og:site_name":59,"og:description":14},"article",{"robots":90,"canonical":52},"index,follow",{"doc_id":7,"site_id":25},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":93},[94,98,101,105,110,114,119,124,129,132,136],{"id":21,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":95,"show_sort_weight":96,"slug":97},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":11,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":12,"show_sort_weight":99,"slug":100},80,"literature",{"id":53,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":102,"show_sort_weight":103,"slug":104},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":106,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":107,"show_sort_weight":108,"slug":109},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":20,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":111,"show_sort_weight":112,"slug":113},"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":115,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":116,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":118},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":120,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":121,"show_sort_weight":122,"slug":123},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":125,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":126,"show_sort_weight":127,"slug":128},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":127,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":130,"show_sort_weight":127,"slug":131},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":133,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":134,"show_sort_weight":133,"slug":135},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":137,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":138,"show_sort_weight":106,"slug":139},19,"General","general"]