A review by iluxia
Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima

2.0

If love were about possession instead of respect, then this book would be a portrayal of love indeed. But Kiyoaki is difficult to sympathize with, not the least because of his callousness towards the precarious social condition of women in general and the woman he "loves" in particular. Women are the problem, apparently: it's a woman's fault if a man can't control himself; it's a woman who 'breaks the friendship of men'; it's certainly also a woman's fault that he can't make up his mind about what he wants because she 'confuses him.' Women are described here like ripe fruits for consumption and nothing more. Although Mishima is certainly a very skilled writer and that skill is on showcase with this book's beautiful prose, the content itself is hard to swallow. The tragic part is that I can see how this book directly informs the writing of more contemporary Japanese writers, like Haruki Murakami.