Characterization of Shimamura in Kawabata's Snow Country

¶ … Characterization of Shimamura in Kawabata's Snow Country Shimamura reads a great deal about the Occidental ballet without ever having attended a performance; his passion for things beyond his ken is a strong characterization for the safe distance and detachment in his life and soul. Wealthy, bored, dissatisfied, and detached from life and love, he travels to Japan's snow country and meets the aging geisha, Komako.

Distracted from his writing about a subject he has never personally experienced, he states: "After all, these fingers keep a vivid memory of the woman I am going to see." As Shimamura travels to his clandestine liaison with the geisha, his view of life and the temporary escape to the mountains is reflected in Koko's image in the coach's window. "In the depths of the mirror the evening landscape moved by, the mirror and the reflected figures like motion pictures superimposed one on the other.

The figures and the background were unrelated, and yet the figures, transparent and intangible, and the background, dim in the gathering darkness, melted into a sort of symbolic world not of this world. Particularly when a light out in the mountains shone in the center of the girl's face, Shimamura felt his chest rise at the inexpressible beauty of it." Shimamura attempts to force Komako into the mold of an ideal image -- just as in the mirrored reflection, yet without depth, dimension, or warmth.

She proves to indict his character through her depth of violent passion and tragic love for this man living a life of imagery; smoke and mirrors -- a lie. Snow carries the imagery of cold, frozen emotions, gloomy forecasts, colorless life, and the dampened silence of thick blankets of white snow. Komako lives in the color red; a color representing the emanation of life and a hotly fueled desperation for the ability to love and feel.

The tragedy in the illicit affair between Shimamura and Komako is in the deadness of their lives before their meeting; the abandonment with which Komako gives herself to the affair, and the harsh, final shattering of all illusion or regret. As the "Heavenly River descends directly into Shimamura's soul, he is.