Book Review: Spring Snow is the first book in "The Sea of Fertility" tetralogy, the final work by Yukio Mishima (1925-70). Time and place are essential to the story told here. As a child Kiyoaki, the son of a nouveau riche samurai family, is sent to live with an aristocratic family of ancient lineage to learn culture and manners. He and their daughter Satoko are raised as brother and sister as he learns "elegance." But this elegance is affected, overrefined, artificial, ineffectual. The aristocracy is a dying breed: enfeebled, exhausted, enervated. Japan in the early 20th Century is becoming Western, industrial, warlike. Infected by these aristocratic values, however, Kiyoaki decides to live only through emotion; his social climbing family's wealth allows him to ignore practical necessities. For Mishima, the preternaturally handsome Kiyoaki is a tragic moral lesson as his family "had enjoyed centuries of immunity to the virus of elegance." As years go by, after much childishness and game playing, he decides he loves Satoko, but only after it's too late for their story to end without misery and suffering. Contributing to the torment of the time is a punishing class structure and a generally negative attitude toward women. At times Spring Snow seems like a Japanese Romeo and Juliet, but rather than star-crossed lovers, their misfortune is of their own making. Often the characters' actions are unclear, inconsistent, puzzling, perhaps because of my temporal or cultural differences or just the recklessness of youth. All is emotionally fraught, but this is no more a love story than is Wuthering Heights. Spring Snow is a slow read requiring patience, a thoroughly researched historical novel that is often beautifully written and leavened with discourses on philosophy and religion. The story becomes more arresting in the second half, which promises much for the three sequels. [4★]
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