Author(s): Yukio Mishima

Fiction

Spring Snow is the first book of Mishima’s masterpiece tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility. The novel is set in Tokyo in 1912, in the closed circles of the imperial court and the ancient aristocracy, a world beginning to be breached by newcomers, the rich provincial families whose money and vitality makes them contenders for social and political power. The Matsugae family belongs to this parents; advancement –in a family of the waning aristocracy, the elegant Ayakuras. Now, in his manhood, Kiyoaki is caught up in the tensions between old and new, fiercely loving and, seemingly with almost equal ferocity, hating the Ayakuras’ exquisite daughter, Satoko. Wanting her and repelling her, he is held in psychic paralysis until events shockingly reveal to him the magnitude of his passion. In its splendid evocation of the past, in its assertion of the insubstantiality of beauty and happiness, in its subtle orchestration of cultural forces and individual lives. Spring Snow is one of the major novels of modern Japanese literature. 'A novel with the perfect beauty of a Japanese garden…a classic of modern Japanese literature' – Chicago Sun-Times 'Mishima writes with] an economy of means to create enormous myths –his novels are compressed visions.' – Arthur Miller