|
Spring Snow Posters
Photos Art
Search for Posters Art Prints, photos and get
results from all the many categories from Amazon including
books, videos, dvds, toys, video games, and more.
|
|
|
Posters Art
Prints Photos collectables |
|
|
|
|
|
|
If for some reason you can't find what the
poster or art print your looking for try using the search boxes
below
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Rating:  -
Just finished reading an excellent book, just a few minutes ago, and I feel compelled to write a review, while ideas are still fresh in my mind.
This is the first book I've finished reading for my Summer Reading. The book is called Snow Spring (Haru no Yuki) by Mishima Yukio and its the first book in his masterpiece, The Sea of Fertility or Hojou no Umi. The Sea of Fertility is a series of four novels by one of Japan's greatest authors. The book I have is the Vintage International edition, translated by Michael Gallagher.
This novel really moved me. In the last 100 pages, I couldn't do anything but finish it. Just like a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, where the reader hangs onto every word until the truth and mystery is finally revealed in the last word, so does this novel grip the reader.
On the surface is a conventional tale of the Japanese idea of unrequited love, a theme that is done over and over again in Japanese fiction. What sets this piece apart from others, is Mishima narrative drive and richly detailed characters and the psychological insight into every major and minor character involved.
Kiyoaki begins his ill fated relationship with the beautiful Satoko, whom he has known all his life. At first he disregards her and then he is on fire to obtain her love after she is engaged to a Prince. Wealthy families are invovled in making the Wedding ceremony a success and any type of scandal leaking out to the press must be avoided at all costs. But Kioyaki single minded determination to pursure Satoko, despite such obstacles, causes the reader to want him to succeed.
On the one hand, Kiyoaki lets his desires and emotions rage out of control and on the other all those emotions put him into action. He used to sit around in his room all day, lonely and depressed, until he just decided to pusure love. Its his drive to obtain love and his selfish quest for Satoko's heavenly beauty that pushes him along page after page. These type of overly romantic novels can quickly turn unwittingly comical in lesser writer. But Mishima combines the richness of Japanese traditional and culture with romantic ideas of love and realistic views, based in concrete reality, that prevent the work from becoming a low form of soap opera.
The novel is both realistic novel and emotional charged romantic that causes the entire work to be a cleverly crafted paradox. For example, Honda is Kiyoaki's best friend in high school. Honda has a revelation that he must prevent Kiyoaki from pursuing Satoko becomes of his friend's harmful obession. The fact that Honda can't bring himself to hurt his friend by giving him a cold rational arguement, shows love between friends that isn't distorted by irrational love. Kiyoaki's love for Satoko is more based on his own selfish fantasy. It is this fantastic love that wins out between Satoko and over Honda, who had good intentions but failed to act on them. Irrational love wins out over the gloom of reality.
Without giving away any more of the story, let me just end with how this book took over my imagination and wouldn't let it go for 2 whole days. All day Saturday and all Sunday afternoon, I cared more about the characters in this story then my own family. I couldn't do anything else except finish reading it.
It starts out slow but builds to a breakneck speed in the end. It is highly recommended for anyone who wants to read an excellent novel this Summer. Forget about it being Japanese and look past all that exoticism and you will see the novel for all its beauty.
Today I will start on the second novel in the series, called Runaway Horses.
I can't wait.
Rating: -
In "Spring Snow," Yukio Mishima has chosen the perfect title for his novel. The narrative is as gentle and as beautiful as wet snow on spring blossoms, and indeed there is a poignant scene where two lovers have a tryst in a rickshaw under such conditions. It was my first foray into the world of Mishima -- indeed, of Japanese literature -- and will not be my last.
The story of a young and handsome aristocrat, Kiyoaki Matsugae, and the beautiful and mysterious Ayakura Satoko, comes from the same time-honored tradition of as more familiar star-crossed lovers such as Romeo and Juliet, Pyramus and Thisbe, Tristan and Isolde, and Lancelot and Guinevere. Set just after the Russo-Japanese War in the early 20th century, the novel offers intriguing insights into a Japanese culture that is at once in flux and clinging to traditions.
If you love a writer whose strength is description of nature, Mishima is not to be missed. His words are as fit as any Nature Channel special on the wonders of Japan and he is equally adept at describing the contours of his young lovers' bodies. In addition to the sensual and sensuous wonders, the inner psychology of passion-plagued minds is a point of expertise for this writer. He deftly avoids sentimentalism while walking the thin line between hatred and love, between passion and pain.
Symbolism, description, psychology, and a gentle narrative pace. What's not to love? Readers looking for a fast-paced plot might not be overwhelmed, but those who love it when they stumble upon a "writer's writer" will be glad they tried Yukio Mishima. It is the first book of the tetralogy, "The Sea of Fertility."
Rating: -
Suprisingly, after reading the reviews for Yukio Mishima's literary masterpiece "Spring Snow," I was unable to find anyone who interpreted this tragic Romeo and Juliet like love story the same way that I did. Perhaps, because of my own right wing and nationalistic belief systems that were similar to Mishimas I was able to catch the subtle hints of greater depths beneath the somewhat simple and cliched story of two lovers whose desire to be with one another was thwarted by unfortunate circumstances. I understood "Spring Snow" to be an elegantly written allegory full of symbolism and metaphors and describing the decline and gradual dissolution of the traditional world of the past; a society that existed as a thriving, living hierarchy wherein the Emperor represented the peak. I understood the main protagonist Kiyoaki, a son of an ancient traditional samurai family, to represent a weakened and diluted traditional Japanese society that has become listless and frail due to the inroads that "progressive" Western society and influence had made on it, but which still retained some residue of its health. Satoko, Kiyoaki's love whom he is obsessed with, is the soul of that traditional society. Honda, Kiyoaki's best friend, represents the modern world with its emphasis on all of its afflictions such as rationality, reason, "progressiveness," intellectualization, and industrialism. The ending is a tragic scenario describing symbolically and microcosmically what has happened on a macroscopic scale. The life and spirit of the traditional world has separated (Satoko willingly renounces this world and becomes a nun at a Buddhist convent, swearing an oath never to see Kiyoaki again in this life), Kioyaki, representing the traditional world, lacking the very spirit that gives it life, dies, leaving only his dreams to Honda (the best friend who is compassionate, caring, and sympathizing, but incapable of understanding Kiyoaki) the new sterile modern world which replaces the old. However, once our declining civilization finally self destructs, a world will be reborn in which Kiyoaki and Satoko will be reunited, and a mechanistic sort of life will be again reinvested with a passionate spirit. Also described is the corruption in the nobility who no longer follow principles and modes of behavior that arise not through the acknowledging of rules and ideas that are imposed on them from the outside, but a way of life that permeates from within, overflowing and filled with an organic livelihood, and who are instead preoccupied with pettiness and a pathological preoccupation of appearances.
"Spring Snow" is the first book I have had the fortune of reading by this luminary literary figure from Japan and it will not be the last.
Rating:  -
Yukio Mishima is, sadly, known best for the circumstances of his death. He committed seppuku (ritual suicide by sword) after finishing the final book of this tetralogy--The Sea of Fertility. He, along with Kawabata and Murakami, is one of the most prominent Japanese authors that actually gained attention during his life. Mishima was called a radical, a right-winger. Some think that this stigma affects his writing greatly, but hearing someone say that makes me wonder why they're reading him to begin with.
SPRING SNOW is the story of Kiyoaki Matsugae, and his Imperially sanctioned and revered family. I thought that it was clear early on that Kiyoaki was an interesting character. He is the image of adolescence in this novel; Honda, Kiyo's best companion (I don't go out of my way to call him a friend), is, I think, more respectable. I'm not sure if Mishima, in writing this novel, was masochistic with Kiyoaki and more level-headed with some of the other characters, but it certainly gives us a great perspective in what goes on in Kiyoaki's mind.
Kiyo and Satoko were childhood friends; after his interest in her wanes, he's given notice that she is to marry a Prince. "The grass always looks greener on the other side"--this is what I think of, looking back on Kiyo and his decision to tell his father that there was "absolutely nothing" between himself and Satoko. He goes on to become more infatuated with her presence; "doomed as it was inevitable" is what the synopsis says of this romance.
The reason I give this 4 stars? I really felt the book could've been 50 to 75 pages shorter. I couldn't help but get tired of it in places. Another reviewer mentioed that Mishima isn't very inventive, but is very skilled. I agree with that totally. The story itself is not enough to warrant a reading (seriously--I've read countless other Japanese novels with the exact same romance-based-on-family-strain plot). It's the way that Mishima tells us of his characters, and the settings. I might go as far to say that--yes, I think that he is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
All complaints aside, this novel is amazing, and I feel that I'd appreciate it even more if I paged through it again. Mishima writes with a beauty that is hard to categorize; it's not really comparable to Murakami or Tanizaki, or any other famed Japanese authors who are still hailed today.
Mishima carried with him demons. And angels! And their chorus is in these pages.
Rating: -
This is the first of a group of four novels by Mishima called The Sea of Fertility. Taken as a group they are excellent novels or even what one might call a literary masterpiece. The four books are:
- "Spring Snow,"
- "Runaway Horses,"
- "The Temple of Dawn," and
- "The Decay of the Angel."
I asked another reader if Mishima's book "Spring Snow" was a universal story or a period piece unique to Japan. They were a bit uncertain. The good news is that it is both. It is a modern 20th century version of Romeo and Juliet - or a similar type of theme but not identical to Shakespeare's drama by any stretch - but having said that, there are many parallels. It is set in Tokyo around 1912; it involves two families and two lovers; there is a problem betrothal involving the female protagonist Satoko (Kiyoaki is the male); and there are outside forces at work - the Royal family. To say more would be to give away the plot. I am not an expert on Japanese literature but I thought that it rated 5 stars.
It is a clear and compelling read, and I sat down glued to the book and read 270 pages the first day. For that reason - along with the beauty of the story and the scenery and the characters - it deserves 5 stars. As I reached the end of the book, I thought that the story faltered slightly. Also, the author is great but perhaps not brilliant nor very innovative. He is touted as being "like Dostoevsky" on the book jacket - a quote from the Christian Science Monitor. Yes, there are some fabulous scenes and excellent writing that transports the reader to Japan, and a rickshaw ride through a snowy spring afternoon. But, before reading the book, I had just finished reading the masterpiece Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, and some short stories by Chekhov. In comparison, Mishima's love story seemed a bit light compared to Dostoevsky, but perhaps on par with Chekhov. That is not a bad comparison.
In reading the prose, I had the same feeling reading this book as I did when I read some of Saul Bellow's books, especially Herzog. Mishima seems to put a lot of emotional energy into the writing and he says things that are a bit on the edge of social norms. In a society such as Japan, the book must have been a bit racy when it came out.
Is it a world class masterpiece? Probably not on its own, but it is exceptional. Taken as a group of four, The Sea of Fertility group might be a masterpiece series. This is an excellent book and I highly recommend the read.
As a final note, this book has no introduction or extra notes on the author or the book. It is just the basic book, but it seems to be an excellent translation.
|
