summary 春の雪 Haru no Yuki

春の雪 Haru no Yuki review ↠ 103 S feelings for the exuisite spirited Satoko observed from the sidelines by his devoted friend Honda When Satoko is engaged to a royal prince Kiyoaki realises the magnitude of his passion. It is hard to put words to the beauty and melancholy that Mishima pours into this first of his great tetralogy The symbolism the imagery the characters everything here is drawn with a fine pencil and eye for detail The characters reappear in the following books but not as you might expect This is one of the great monuments of Japanese literature in the 20th C my other favourite is Soseki s I am a Cat and it is truly a pleasure to read and savour

春の雪 Haru no Yuki review ↠ 103 Tokyo 1912 The closed world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders rich provincial families a new and powerful political and social eliteKiyoaki has. Set near Tokyo in 1912 In Spring Snow Kiyoaki Matsugae is sent as a child be raised on the estate of a Count where he learns all the worst habits of a decadent court He is slothful he preens in the knowledge of his superior looks When 18 years of age he is so self involved the familiar disaffectedness of many Mishima protagonists that even when kissing the woman who loves him he thinks only of how he feels He s an affected asshole who takes a conscious pleasure in crueltyThis was further proof of the hidden savage essence of the elegance he had cultivated for so long p 257Kioyaki s friend is the upstanding Shigekuni Honda He adores Kiyoaki A hard working young man who loses himself in thoughts of the niceties of European Natural Law and the Laws of Manu which at the time of the action the author tells us were the foundation of Indian law He also has an abiding interest in historiography particularly how he and his peers will be viewed by future generations This dovetails with the theme of reincarnation which links the four books of The Sea of Fertility cycle The vast Matsugae estate is imposing It is still the period of mourning for the late emperor who was called Meiji in life So the cherry blossom festival as it turns out will be observed though on a smaller scale than usual An imperial prince attends with his wife and other visitors Their route through the blossoms is girded by a red and white curtain presumably for purposes of privacy The Western house is filled with geishas A platform for their cherry blossom dances is built in the garden Later there will be a banuet and a film shown based on a Dickens novelAmid it all Kiyoaki is adrift Satoko is there in all her finery but it s somehow not enough What is he waiting for In thrall to his own beauty his pride Kiyoaki is at odds with himself contradictory in his impulses He is lost no decisiveness aside from a snowy rickshaw ride with Satoko which was her idea comes from him His is a rapt passivity Meanwhile he stubbornly let s go of Satoko when she is courted by an imperial prince and thinks good riddanceDevoid of worry or annoyance free of all anxiety Kiyoaki at nineteen liked to see himself as a cold and supremely capable young man He felt that he was now past some watershed in the course of his life p 163But he isn t Unable to read his own emotions he takes grief for delight his strength of will as he terms it when tearing up a letter from Satoko unread he begins to sense may be cowardice for she is just about to marry the imperial prince What a muddle he s in Though an aristocrat he has known social isolation much of his life Thus his misreading of people and situations always in a manner that plays to his own falsely elevated sense of self worthLong ago he had resolved to recognize his emotions as his only guiding truth and to live his life accordingly even if meant a deliberate aimlessness That principle had now brought him to his present sinister feelings of joy which seemed to be the brink of a racing plunging whirlpool There seemed to be nothing left but to throw himself into it p 177I won t go into Kiyoaki and Satoko s love affair or the novel s tragic denouement Suffice it to say that Kiyoaki s comeuppance is uite a spectacle and Honda is there to puzzle over it The book has a very long fuse The last 200 pages are far better than the first 200 Despite this uneven start this is the strongest Mishima novel I have ever read

Yukio Mishima µ 3 free read

春の雪 Haru no Yuki review ↠ 103 Been raised among the elegant Ayakura family members of the waning aristocracy but he is not one of them Coming of age he is caught up in the tensions between the old and the new and hi. Haru no Yuki Spring Snow The Sea of Fertility Book 1 Yukio MishimaSpring Snow is a novel by Yukio Mishima the first in his Sea of Fertility tetralogy It was published serially in Shinch from 1965 to 1967 and then in book form in 1969 The novel is set in the early years of the Taish period with the reign of the Emperor Taish and is about the relationship between Kiyoaki Matsugae the son of a rising new rich family and Satoko Ayakura the daughter of an aristocratic family fallen on hard times Shigekuni Honda a school friend of Kiyoaki s is the main witness to the events The novel s themes center on the conflicts in Japanese society caused by westernization in the early 20th century 2014 1391 640 9789643516178 20 31051399

• Paperback
• 389
• 春の雪 Haru no Yuki
• Yukio Mishima
• English
• 20 March 2018
• 9780099282990