Spring Snow by Mishima Yukio 

Translated by Michael Gallagher

(1965-1968, translation 1972)

Penguin Random House

(First Novel in The Sea of Fertility Tetrology)

Mishima presents us with a passionate love story. The central figures are two beautiful young people from aristocratic families, Kiyoaki Matsugae and Satoko Ayakura, but their drama plays out against the dramatic social and economic changes taking place during the Taisho Period, between 1912 and 1926. The historical scope of the novel includes the Meiji period and the latter years of the Edo period, for Mishima is intent on chronicling the decay of Japanese culture, morality, and martial ascendancy. For example, Kiyoaki is not the son of the revered marquis of Kashagawa, a lion of the Sino-Japanese war, but the effete, idle, and soft grandson. Kiyoaki has been either in love or not in love with the beautiful Satoko since they were children. He is aware of his own extraordinary, almost feminine beauty and all but undone by Satoko’s angelic face. Far from a man of action, he thinks obsessively about what he should or should not do, resists his passions as base and ugly, and imputes the cruelest of intentions and the most complex machinations to Satoko. Nevertheless, an assignation is arranged, prompted by a late-winter invitation from Satoko, to ride in a carriage. In the warmth of the cab and for the first time experiencing a moment of privacy, the lovers share a transcendent level of intimacy through a kiss. One would imagine that marriage would be inevitable, but pride, contrariness, and self-doubt incite the hero to distance himself from the source of his desire. Finally, when his parents inform him that Satoko has a suitor and inquire if he might perhaps have an objection to this development, he tells them that he has absolutely no interest in Satoko. During this period he becomes host to two Thai princes and renews his on-again, off-again relationship with the practical and sturdy Shikeguni Honda. The four engage in passionate philosophical discussions.

Unfortunately, Kiyoaki and Honda’s classmates from their elite school are so cruel to the Thai princes that it becomes necessary to remove them temporarily from the campus, and though this leads to a carefree beach-side hiatus, ultimately, the world interferes. News arrives that the prince’s sister, the fiancee of his friend, has died. And perhaps worse, Kiyoaki learns that a high-status nobleman has received the Emperor’s sanction to pursue a contract of marriage with Satoko. Surprising or not, this development drives Kiyoaki to embark on an illicit affair that threatens to destabilize the two families and even the Japanese royal family. To attain their goal, the secret lovers must engage the assistance of Satoko’s aged nurse, Tadeshina, who must go down as literature’s most wily and venomous go-betweens. The romance itself is exceptional. Mishima is a sensualist in the extreme, never hesitating to discourse on the erotic allure of wine, wind, or food. Likewise, he never lets the narrative get too much in the way of lush, vivid settings that symbolize the clash between the ideal Japan of the past and its present decay, whether it be lampooning Japanese affecting Western dress to observe cherry blossoms, or defiling the very history of the nation by having Kiyoaki arrange an assignation between a housemaid and his tutor in his grandfather’s library, beneath his very portrait.

“Kiyoaki was so capricious that he tended to exacerbate the very worries that gnawed at him. Had it been applied to love affairs, his stubborn persistence would have been that of almost any young man. But in his case it was different. Perhaps this was why Satoko deliberately sowed the seeds of dark and thorny flowers, rather than brightly colored ones, knowing what an unhealthy fascination they held for Kiyoaki. Indeed he had always been fertile ground for such seeds. He indulged himself, to the exclusion of all else, in the cultivation of his anxiety.” (28)