Shinpei’s Reviews > Spring Snow > Status Update

“What he was experiencing now was genuine emotion. When he compared this to the various sentiments of love that had once occupied his imagination, he knew that this was something crude and blunt, violent and sinister, an emotion that was altogether far removed from elegance.
It was hardly the stuff that poems are made of. For the first time in his life, he accepted raw ugliness as indeed being part of him.”

“When he had stood watching Kiyoaki take
Satoko by the hand and run down through the shadows of the moonlit garden to the beach, he had felt that he too was sinning by helping them.
But if it was sin, it was also indescribably beautiful; a recurrent image of loveliness running away from him and disappearing.”

"And just as in the old wars, there will be casualties in the war of emotion, I think. It's the fate of our age, and you're one of our representatives. So what about it then? You're fully resolved to die in this new war, am I right?”Kiyoaki's only answer was a flickering smile.

“He drew comfort from the peace of mind that comes with loss. In his heart, he always preferred the actuality of loss to the fear of it. He had lost Satoko. If a candle has burned brilliantly but now stands alone in the dark with its flame extinguished, it need no longer fear that its substance will dissolve into hot wax. For the first time in his life, Kiyoaki came to realize the healing powers of solitude.”

He had never looked forward to the wisdom and other vaunted benefits of old age. Would he be able to die young and if possible free of all pain? A graceful death as a richly patterned kimono, thrown carelessly across a polished table slides unobtrusively down into the darkness of the floor beneath. A death marked by elegance. The thought of dying suddenly spurred him with a desire to see Satoko, if only for a moment.

“To feel myself dissolve into your beauty and freeze to death in the snow - no fate could be sweeter.”

“He felt as if he were breathing in a new coffin of fresh white wood. Since early childhood, all that he had been taught to revere as honorable and beautiful was to be found, as far as the Matsugaes were concerned, in the proximity of death.”

“But now he caught sight of the profile of the woman in the aquamarine kimono and recognized Satoko. His fantasies were shattered. Why hadn't he recognized her earlier? Probably his whim that the beautiful girl should be a total stranger.”

“Princess Kasuga, however, was not much more than thirty. Beautiful, elegant, imposing, she was like a flower at its moment of perfection. At that moment, for the first time in his life, he was struck by the full force of womanly beauty - a dazzling burst of elegance that made his senses reel.”