The novel describes the snow country in three different seasons for Shimamura's three visits these are, in chronological order: spring, winter, and autumn. Her desire to enter into something more long-lasting and more significant leads her into a relationship with Shimamura, but since he does not care to empathize with her feelings or help her materially, she can do nothing but hold onto him while he is in the hot spring and await his return when he is back in Tokyo. Even while she was still an amateur entertainer during Shimamura's first visit, Komako is bound in the restrictive role of professional woman who must please and amuse her guest but can never sustain anything with him. Yet, knowing the dispositions of Komako and Shimamura, it is clear that their love is doomed from the beginning, a 'waste of effort' which, like the laboriously made Chijimi cloth is nevertheless beautiful in its poignant sadness.

If Snow Country is about anything, it is about failed love. Even when he sees Yoko's unconscious body fall through the fire, he thinks about it more as a phantasm, perfectly horizontal, instead of a person already dead or in danger and his concern is more so a desire that the image not be broken by the stray movement of a limb, not for Yoko's safety. It is in this attitude that he wonders at the reflection of Yoko's eye in the mirror-like window on the train and the reflection of Komako's red cheek in the mirror in his room. However, Shimamura's calm insistence on continuing to think of Komako in such a way, even after her many personal revelations and attempts to make him understand her feelings as not merely a geisha but a woman in love, primes the fuse for Komako's tragic realization that her love can come to nothing when Shimamura unconsciously switches from calling her a 'good girl' to a 'good woman.' FantasyĪs an expert in occidental ballet who has never seen an actual ballet but rather draws all his knowledge from books and photographs, Shimamura is not really an expert at all as he himself admits, he is a man who prefers to dream from his armchair without the threat of being confronted by reality. Indeed, most of the times when Komako visits Shimamura's room she is heated and giddy with the drink and excitement of whatever party she had just entertained, so his lust for her seems to be well reciprocated.

While on the train in the beginning of the novel, Shimamura can recall little of Komako other than her touch and a certain suggestive moistness that point to how he thinks of her mostly as a sensual woman instead of the friend that he originally hoped she would become.

Komako snow country