Spring Snow: “continually changing patterns within a kaleidoscope”

I haven’t written about the characters in Spring Snow, not having much to say so far. But I’m very much enjoying Mishima’s style (translated by Michael Gallagher). 

For example, this is how he writes about a key (from the perspective of Iinuma, Kiyoaki’s retainer and tutor): 

“It lay on the palm of his thick, blunt hand, blue and metallic like a dragonfly with its wings torn off.

Afterwards Iinuma would recall this moment time and again. How torn and naked the key seemed, like a ravaged body as it lay in his palm.” (Ch.14) 

I love metaphors, I love details, and Mishima has an interesting way of seeing and describing things. 

“The small room bathed him in cozy warmth, making him feel as if he were wrapped in a huge, opaque cocoon of glowing white.” (Ch.16) 

He compares facial expressions to something concrete: 

“He had become especially adept with Kiyoaki, with whom he had daily contact and whose expressions reminded him of the whirling fragments of colored glass that settled into continually changing patterns within a kaleidoscope.” (Ch.20) 

And: 

“The Marquis and Marquise, whatever their intrigues, wore their emotions like clothes that were dyed in the vivid primary colors of the tropics. Kiyoaki’s emotions, however, were as subtly complex as the layer upon layer of color in the dresses of the court ladies; they were constantly merging—the drab brown of an autumn leaf shading into crimson, the crimson dissolving into the green of bamboo grass.” (Ch.21) 

He also compares thoughts to something concrete: 

“Those who lack imagination have no choice but to base their conclusions on the reality they see around them. But on the other hand, those who are imaginative have a tendency to build fortified castles they have designed themselves, and to seal off every window in them. And so it was with Kiyoaki.” (Ch.23) 

Spring Snow is full of visual descriptions and exquisite details: 

“In summer, when the cloud formations were at their peak, the whole thing seemed to be transformed into a huge theater, with the villa for the spectators and the smooth expanse of the bay becoming the vast stage on which the clouds performed their extravagant ballets.” (Ch.31) 

I have thought of 20th century Japanese novels as a distinct tradition, quite different from Western novels, but Mishima’s metaphors are reminiscent of Proust’s and Flaubert’s. 

I’ve noted that the thread imagery appears a few times, though probably won’t call it a motif. 

Sometimes it’s simply a description: 

“Though the sky was still bright, the slope was in deep shadow, and the heavy growth of trees and shrubbery on the ridge stood out blackly against the white glare of the sky. However, the light was breaking through here and there like silver thread skillfully woven into an otherwise dark tapestry. Behind the trees, the western sky was like a sheet of isinglass. The bright summer day had been a gaudy scroll which was tapering off into blankness.” (Ch.35) 

Other times it’s a metaphor: 

“His pride was hurt when he realized that this was all he had to rely on as the fierce pain and agony of love spun their coil. Such pain ought to be fit material for weaving a magnificent tapestry, but Kiyoaki had only a tiny domestic loom with nothing but pure white thread at his disposal.” (Ch.15) 

When Kiyoaki’s best friend Honda goes to court and watches a woman on trial: 

“The spectators stared at this small woman in fascination, as if she might perhaps have the translucent body of a silkworm that had somehow excreted a thread of inconceivable complexity and evil.” (Ch.29) 

Mishima writes another thread metaphor when a character receives a farewell letter: 

““… before I cut the slender thread that binds this wretched creature to life…”” (Ch.39) 

Stylistically Mishima is very, very good. I don’t think I’m going to like him as much as Soseki or Akutagawa, but he’s definitely better and much more interesting than Tanizaki, Kawabata, and Murakami.