Some notes on Amazon.com reviews:
sunukp review states that it depicts the images of Japanese countryside (on Hokkaido island). Actually, it is on Honshu. The place is called Yuzawa, one hour north of Tokyo by Bullet train (Mid you: At the time of the book, there was no bullet train. Trains were very slow.) Between Kanto plain (in which Tokyo is located) and Yuzawa (in Niigata pref.) is a mountain range and separates the climate completely. While Kanto is relatively warm, Niigata is known as one of the heaviest snow falling area in the world. Trains goes under the mountain through a very long tunnel. Before entering the tunnel, there typically is no snow. When one get through the tunnel, you are in the midst of the snow. Thus, the starting phrase "Country border's long tunnel, I went through, it was the snow country. The bottom of the night turned white." You can actually visit the scenes described in the book even now. Apart from that, sunukp's descriptions are pretty accurate. Unlike many western stories, it is the series of scenes (in many cases, static.) This comes out of the philosophy of Japanese literature (especially MASAOKA Shiki, one of the most prominant Haiku writer in the history) that it is better to depict the scenes that the person is seeing or hearing than to describe what he or she would be feeling/thinking, because by reading and imaging what s/he saw would provoke the similar feeling to the reader. Kawabata is very good for it. Yukiguni (The Snow Country), among others, is more a poetry than a novel in the western standard. (Thus, the word order, pronounciation, rhythm, pitch, etc. become very important:- one of the reason why it is extremely difficult to translate good Japanese literature.)

So, you probably want to locate those 5 scenes in the book.


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