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

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