Spring Snow

Spring Snow is the first novel in Yukio Mishima's The Sea of Fertility, a tetralogy set in early 20th-century Japan. The story takes place during the Taisho era (beginning around 1912) and follows the doomed love between Kiyoaki Matsugae, the beautiful, melancholy son of a newly elevated marquis, and Satoko Ayakura, the daughter of an ancient but financially declining court noble family.

Kiyoaki, 18 years old and a student at the elite Peers School in Tokyo, lives on his family's vast estate near Shibuya. His father, Marquis Matsugae, embarrassed by the family's humble samurai origins, sent Kiyoaki as an infant to be raised in Count Ayakura's household, hoping to instill aristocratic elegance in his heir. The plan succeeded too well: Kiyoaki has grown into a strikingly handsome but emotionally volatile young man who feels alienated from his own family's vitality. He keeps a secret dream journal, recording vivid and often prophetic dreams. His only friend is his classmate Shigekuni Honda, a quiet, rational boy who plans to study law. Kiyoaki's personal tutor, Iinuma, a young man from rural Kagoshima, resents the boy's delicacy but has developed a complex devotion to him.

Satoko, two years older than Kiyoaki and his companion since childhood, is in love with him, but Kiyoaki instinctively rejects anyone who shows him affection. During a visit to the estate with her great-aunt, the Abbess of Gesshu, a Buddhist convent near Nara, Satoko unsettles Kiyoaki by asking how he would react if she were to leave. He agonizes over her meaning until he learns that she has refused a marriage proposal. Concluding that she refused because she loves him, his anxiety dissolves into rare happiness.

This contentment is short-lived. Repulsed by his father's crude invitation to a geisha house, Kiyoaki writes Satoko a wildly insulting letter falsely claiming he has slept with a geisha and now views all women with contempt. He immediately regrets this. When two Siamese princes, Chao P. and Kri, arrive to study at Peers and ask about his sweetheart, Kiyoaki rashly promises to introduce her. He panics, telephones Satoko, and begs her to burn his letter unopened. She agrees. He arranges a meeting at the Imperial Theater, where he introduces Satoko to the princes with uncharacteristic warmth. Kiyoaki basks in satisfaction, convinced he is not in love with her.

Meanwhile, Kiyoaki discovers that Iinuma has been conducting a secret romance with Miné, one of the household maids, and uses this knowledge to blackmail Iinuma into obedience. Satoko's elderly maid Tadeshina, a shrewd woman who has served the Ayakuras for decades, confirms that Satoko burned the letter. This later proves to be a lie.

Emboldened, Satoko invites Kiyoaki to skip school one snowy morning and ride with her in a rickshaw. In the enclosed cab, they share their first kiss. At the Matsugae cherry blossom festival that spring, attended by the imperial Prince and Princess Toin and other prominent guests, Kiyoaki watches Satoko and for the first time acknowledges that he loves her. Yet beneath a cherry tree at twilight, when he tries to kiss her, she resists and lashes out, calling him a child who understands nothing. Iinuma reveals the devastating truth: Satoko read the insulting letter after all, then learned from the Marquis himself that Kiyoaki had lied about the geisha house. Her behavior all along was shaped by this knowledge. Kiyoaki feels utterly betrayed.

He cuts off all contact, refusing Tadeshina's calls and burning Satoko's letter unopened. When his parents mention a new marriage proposal for Satoko, he coldly declares he has no objection. The suitor is Prince Harunori, the third son of Prince Toin, a member of the Imperial Family. Marquis Matsugae underwrites the enormous costs the Ayakuras cannot afford and orchestrates the courtship. A petition for imperial sanction is submitted to the Minister of the Imperial Household.

Kiyoaki convinces himself he has triumphed over his feelings. But when he learns that the imperial sanction has been granted, he is electrified, not with despair but with irrational, sinister delight. The absolute impossibility now surrounding his love is precisely what he has always craved. For the first time, he declares with full conviction that he loves Satoko. He corners Tadeshina and blackmails her into arranging secret meetings by threatening to reveal a compromising letter Satoko wrote after the petition was filed. Satoko accepts the arrangement with eerie composure.

At an inn near military barracks, Kiyoaki and Satoko consummate their relationship. They continue meeting through the summer, with Honda serving as accomplice, borrowing a car and driving Satoko to the Matsugae seaside villa at Kamakura. During one visit, Honda notices three small black moles on Kiyoaki's left side, a detail that assumes significance in subsequent novels as a mark of reincarnation. Satoko tells Honda she is fully prepared for whatever may come and that every moment with Kiyoaki has felt pure.

By autumn, meetings grow scarce and fraught. Tadeshina discovers Satoko is pregnant and urges her to terminate the pregnancy. Satoko refuses to decide. Driven to desperation, Tadeshina writes a letter to Marquis Matsugae revealing the pregnancy, then attempts suicide with sleeping pills. She survives. The Marquis confronts Kiyoaki, who confesses. His father beats him with a billiard cue, but Kiyoaki's grandmother intervenes, praising his audacity as worthy of her late husband. She takes command: Satoko must have a secret abortion in Osaka, then visit Gesshu Temple as cover. At Shimbashi station, Kiyoaki sees Satoko off. She bids him goodbye with terrible finality, her eyes holding the look of a drowning person.

The abortion is performed in Osaka. But at Gesshu Temple, in the middle of the night, Satoko cuts off her hair before the Buddha and declares her intention to become a nun. The Abbess, recognizing the genuineness of her resolve, agrees to receive her. Before her mother can return from Tokyo, Satoko receives the formal tonsure, completing her renunciation of the world. She vows never to see Kiyoaki again.

All attempts to retrieve Satoko fail. The Marquis sends the police, but the Abbess turns them away. He devises a face-saving strategy: a psychiatrist signs a certificate diagnosing Satoko with a nervous breakdown, and the engagement is dissolved. Kiyoaki, told nothing, learns of it from a newspaper.

He endures a bitter winter under virtual house arrest. In February, he borrows money from Honda and escapes from school, heading for Gesshu. Over five days he is refused entry six times. He falls gravely ill with pneumonia but persists, walking through snow to the convent as penance. He telegrams Honda, who arrives and agrees to plead with the Abbess on his behalf.

Honda delivers an impassioned appeal. The Abbess listens with sympathy but explains that Satoko made a vow before the Lord Buddha, and some force beyond human will enforces it. Her answer is "No." She delivers a discourse on Yuishiki, or Consciousness-Only, the Buddhist teaching that all phenomena arise from the mind, and on the Alaya consciousness, a universal storehouse of karmic memory that gives rise to the chain of causation. This philosophical framework resonates throughout the tetralogy.

On the train back to Tokyo, Kiyoaki, wracked with pain, grasps Honda's hand and tells him he has had a dream: They will meet again beneath the falls. He asks Honda to deliver a note to his mother requesting his dream journal. Two days later, Kiyoaki Matsugae dies at the age of 20. His promise of reunion and the dream journal he leaves behind form the link to the subsequent novels in the cycle.