Shimamura And Komako In Snow Country

In the beginning of the novel Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata, the reader is taken back into a flashback shared by Shimamura and Komako. When they first met, Shimamura sees Komako as this innocent and pure geisha, in his words, an amuteur. He really wanted nothing to do with her besides being a person to be able to conversate . However, when Komako throws herself at him that very night, things change. After this flashback, the reader is taken back to the two characters. Komako brings up the topic of her diary and she tells him its contents. She keeps a regular diary, however she keeps a catalogue of every book she read ever since her late teens. The thing that surprises him is the information she puts down about the novels;
“‘ I just write down the author and the characters and how they are related to each other. That is about all’” (Kawabata 41). The work Komako puts into the catalogues is deemed to be as wasted effort by Shimamura. He sees this form of cataloging as a waste of space and

time. This diary is significant to Komako and the reader for their own separate reasons. For Komako, these diaries kept track of her life for the last couple of years. Anything that was interesting or has appealed to her has went into these books. This is basically an autobiography to Shimamura and the readers.
As a symbol, these diaries are her life, as previously mentioned; her history. As a metaphor, the mentioning of the dairy is like giving him her life. In the future, Komako does offer to let him read all of her diaries. She is offering herself by exposing her inner thoughts and feelings to him.
Komako’s rumination about life is connected to Shimamura’s writing about occidental ballet due to the fact it is based around the lack of experiencing things first hand. Komako bases her information on the outside world through literature and and random magazines left at the inn. She talks about movies and events that she had not seen before. This is the same with Shimamura and he knows it: “It occurred to Shimamura that his own distant fantasy on the occidental ballet, built up from words and photographs in foreign books, was not in its way dissimilar” (Kawabata 43). Shimamura has not seen occidental dance in its motion the entire time, and he does not plan on going to. Komako has not seen much in her life besides the life of the snow country yet she takes about the city life and movies as if she experienced them. They are both living the life based on the lack of evidence. They live in faith on the subjects they follow, like a religion.
The concept of “wasted effort” was introduced in this segment, this theme is connected to their writings due to the reader’s and Shimamura’s opinion.

When Shimamura hears what Komako has to say about her diary, he is greatly disappointed; “‘But what good does it do? [...] A waste of effort’” (Kawabata 41). Shimamura finds Komako’s catalogues a wasted effort due to the fact they do not retain any information. He thinks her work is pointless and a waste of time because what is the point if they do not contain any useful information for the future reading? Then again, when the reader is told about Shimamura’s hobby and how he finds his information, the same judgment can arise from the reader. There is not a difference between Shimamura's and Komako’s research. They do not lead to any valuable points nor does it retain any real information. They worked hard to only end up with relentless information that does nothing for them in the future, besides a memento of wasted

effort.
Throughout the entire book wasted effort is threaded into the book. The relationship between Shimamura and Komako is a form of wasted effort. Everything they went through and and endured turned out to be for nothing at the very end. Another form of wasted effort is the Chijimi clothe producers. This type of cloth takes a long time and these ladies have been training their entire life practicing for it, but since it is not as popular, their life is worthless now;”The nameless workers, so diligent while they lived, had presently died, and only the Chijimi remained” (Kawabata 157). These workers are humble, working annually to produce the tedious cloth that was once popular. The thing about these clothes is they can either last a long time or they can break very easily. If the cloth is broken almost instantly after spending months on creating it, this can be seen as a form of wasted effort.