2009 Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies

Southeast Review of Asian Studies Volume 31 (2009), pp. 29095 Yin-Yang in Snow Country MASAKI MORI University of Georgia In this scholarly note, Masaki Mori shows how yin-yang is a latent structural basis of Kawabata Yasunaris (18991972) Yukiguni (Snow Country), published be-tween 1935 and 1947, thereby ascertaining the novelists Asian afliation in a broad sense. Yin-Yang as a Non-polarized Dichotomy As the terms light and darkness suggest, the Chinese system of yin-yang (in-yo in Japanese) explains the workings of the universe by placing its premise on the sharp contrast that a set of usually two elements, such as daynight, summerwinter, and manwoman, reveal.1 Far from being a straight-forward binary opposition as it might be construed in the West, however, yin-yang reveals a complex interplay on the constant ow, at once opposi-tional and complementary, in the correlation of two contrasted aspects within a certain force eld of operation. Kawabata Yasunaris (18991972) Yukiguni (Snow Country), published between 1935 and 1947 with minor revisions until 1971, provides a working example of a non-polarized dichotomic system, directly mentioning yin-yang at a symboli-cally crucial juncture. More signicantly, the interdependent tension of light and darkness plays out metaphorically between two principal female characters. In spite of its pseudo-dialectic resolution at the end as a result of these womens rivalry, the Japanese piece ultimately proves its cultural heritage of East Asia against a backdrop of the Western binary mode of thought. Kawabata & Traditional Japanese Themes Kawabata is known to have written extensively about traditional Japanese culture. Many of his later novels, such as Senbazuru (Thousand Cranes, 194951) and Koto (The Old Capital, 196162),2 readily exemplify this deep interest that stems from his close reading of classical pieces, such as Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji, ca. 1000). He clearly declared

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his cultural afnity in his 1968 Nobel Prizeacceptance speech, which he titled Utsukushii Nihon no watashi (Japan, the Beautiful and Myself ). Accordingly, in spite of substantial inuence from Western arts and literature in his young days, Kawabata tends to be considered a quintessential Japanese writer. One question here is what renders him an Asian one, apart from his biographical prole.

Critics have already pointed out Buddhist elements, such as samsara (the endless cycle of death and rebirth) and impermanence, which underlie his works, locating him within a broad Asian context. In Snow Country, for instance, Buddhist inuences are prevalent with a direct reference to a nun-nery and a strong undertone of ephemerality innate to such motifs as eet-ing relationships, the fragility of life, and changing seasons. The passive, contemplative acceptance of inevitable change obviously derives from the Buddhism-induced, medieval Japanese worldview of mujokan (the sense of impermanence) rather than from Daoism, which approaches vicis-situde with a more dynamic, positive stance. In turn, such embrace of change accounts for the classical aesthetics of mono no aware (the pathos of things), with which the entire story is imbuedalbeit twisted for the dilettantish consumption of the protagonist Shimamura .

By contrast, another Asian inuence, that of the yin-yang system, is lit-tle noticed as a structural basis of his representative work, although it con-stitutes an integral part of traditional Japanese culture, embossing its mark on Kawabata as well. In fact, Kawabatas novel does mention yin-yang once, when Shimamura makes a day trip by train from the hot spring resort, where he sojourns, to a few nearby towns that used to produce a special fab-ric called chijimi (a type of cotton crepe). The production of ne chijimi, now obsolete and forgotten, required both nimble, diligent hands of un-married girls between fourteen and twenty-four and direct exposure to snow in the very cold weather. Shimamura, who wears it as his summer underclothes, feels special attachment to this textile because of the young female weavers labor and the sense of coolness it offers. An old local his-tory book, Hokuetsu sekifu (The chronicle of snow in northern Koshi province, 1836) by Suzuki Bokushi (17701842), is cited a few times to explain the cool feeling one can savor in summers heat when wearing a garment made of chijimi.

Chijimi production requires snow at every stage of the process over a long, cold winter. Shimamura sends his chijimi garments to the snowy re-gion every winter to have them bleached via a traditional method that lays them open to snow and the cold air after overnight soakings and early morn-ing washings for several days. According to the history book, the chijimi thread is difcult to work except in the humidity of the snow . . . and the dark, cold season is therefore ideal for weaving. The ancients used to add that the way this product of the cold has of feeling cool to the skin in the

292 M. Mori hottest weather is a play of the principles of light and darkness (Kawabata 1956, 154). This yin-yang inherent in chijimi is closely linked to the sym-bolic structure of the entire novel through two principal female characters: the geisha Komako , whom Shimamura visits at the hot spring resort, and the mysterious girl Yoko , who also attracts his attention. The Yin-Yang of Komako & Yoko Although yin is traditionally identied as female and yang as male, there is no need to follow the gender specicity, because yin and yang represent not ontological entities but aspects of the dynamism or a matter of degrees of contrast to be viewed as a relation rather than as a quality in a certain working of the universe (Cheng 2009, 75). In other words, there is nothing that is essentially yin or yang; whether something is yin or yang depends on what particular relationship is being expressed (Ames 2003, 847). In the present case, Komako, who interacts with Shimamura most of the time, stands for the aspect of yang or light as the visible, while Yoko assumes that of yin or darkness largely as the invisible with interspersed appear-ances (Cheng 2009, 74). They reveal a number of sharp differences. Koma-kos vital, physical being as Shimamuras mostly sexual interest sharply contrasts with Yokos fragile, un-physical presence in his perception of her segmented beauty. One stands for passion of the desiring/desired, touched yet paradoxically clean body, whereas the other is reduced to the intangible, virginal purity of a clear voice and a cold, distant light. The contrast is also apparent in their respective names, occupations, nancial obligations, and levels of maturity.

Two mirror scenes early in the novel, each of which shows a reected image of one of the female characters set against the surroundings, illustrate the two womens marked difference. In the rst mirror scene, on a train window at deepening dusk, Yokos eyes glimmer ephemerally with a small re of the distant hill while the rest of her translucent, superimposed image oats amid the indistinct, constantly moving wilderness, suggesting her aerial beauty. At sunrise the following morning, Shimamura sees Komakos face and the snow outside reected together on a mirror in his hotel room, with her vividly red cheeks set against the surrounding snow. Emphasizing the solid contour of her body, this mirror-reected image distinctively re-lates her to the whiteness of snow and the color red (see Mori 2004).

It is important to notice, however, that the two women are not pre-sented as polar opposites in spite of their emphasized differences. Rather, they closely associate with each other in a relation of reciprocity and reso-nance of yin-yang dynamics (Cheng 2009, 74). Both Komako and Yoko combine, in inverse proportions, a quality of heat-induced intensity with the snowy nature of coldness, which itself exemplies the yin-yang system,

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thereby complementing each other. For instance, in spite of the cold touch of her hair and the snow-like layer of white powder on her face, Shimamura often notices inherent warmth, even heat, in Komakos body and character, as symbolized by the redness of her bare neck and cheeks. Yoko, on the other hand, initially keeps Shimamura away, partly with the earnest stare of her glistening eyes. But her tender, motherly care of others, such as a dying patient and a small child, sometimes mitigates such frigid aloofness, like the glimmer of a distant re through her pupil in the rst mirror scene. Curiously, despite of their strained relationship, they are concerned for each other, even sharing the same dwelling for a while. They are also close in age, although the text initially refers to Yoko as the girl and Komako as the woman due to Shimamuras subjective assumption.

Furthermore, their mutual relationship as well as characterization does not remain statically xed. As the story unfolds in its second half, each of them undergoes certain changes. Symbolized by many objects, such as dy-ing moths in the autumn, Komako transforms from a teenage apprentice geisha to a full-edged one in her early twenties, as Shimamura observes her slight, yet inevitable thicker neckline. No longer keeping her distance, Yoko comes to see him face to face. The only direct reference to her ex-posed physicality (calf ) occurs during her fall in the ending re scene. The two womens intimate rivalry intensies, with each expressing undisguised antipathy to the other as well as earnest concern for her future. This para-dox associating the two women denes the storys symbolic structure (see Mori 2007).

The chijimi episode with a reference to yin-yang must be understood in this context. In Shimamuras associative mind, chijimi stands both for Yoko and for Komako. The fabric was woven by young girls like Yoko, whom he actually imagines would have sung at work over the handloom if she had been born decades ago. Likewise, in his imagination, aided by the informa-tion that the old book provides, the bleached white linen outdoors turns vermilion with the surrounding snow at dawn, similar to Komakos face in the second mirror scene. Most importantly, the fabrics paradoxical cool-ness in the midst of summer has a metaphorically signicant afnity to the combination of heat/warmth and a certain sense of coldness that the two women exhibit.

In a word, Yoko is Komakos inseparable counterpart, not in appear-ance or temperament but in the uidity of her competing yet complement-ing functions. Two of them together constitute a whole of Shimamuras perceived snow country, the only locus that offers the cleansing effect that he seeks as a man of keen modern sensitivity. His aesthetically inclined mind transforms the snow country into a circumscribed eld of beauty be-yond a long tunnel, in which their power dynamism plays out, at once vy-ing for his attention and forming a still unimpaired whole of his desired

294 M. Mori dreamland. In this sense, although they appear as two individual characters for the sake of the plot, on another level, Yoko and Komako represent dif-ferent aspects of female beauty in Shimamuras omnipresent perception apart from the reality of the two women and their locality.

Since the two women reveal common elements along with sharply con-trasted differences at any given time while their close-knit relationship as well as their characterization undergoes change, their mutual relationship closely approaches the yin-yang system. In the interdependence of proxi-mate things (Ames 2003, 846), Komako is manifest as the aspect of light and vital life force, while Yoko stays mostly latent as the aspect of darkness and a potential source of purication. As such, Yoko stands for the invisi-ble, pre-existing background of a thing or the virginal phase of woman-hood, from which Komako the experienced has emerged as the visible thrust of the formation of a thing (Cheng 2009, 74).

This yin-yang dynamic accounts for Komakos otherwise inexplicable behavior in the ending. When Yoko faces serious injury or possible death due to her fall, Komako disregards her own safety and rushes into the re in order to rescue Yokos unconscious body, while asserting that the girl is on the verge of insanity. On a symbolic level, it is the inseparable other that sheherself acting in a deranged mannertries to salvage at the critical moment, because she cannot be her own self without the counterpart, thereby demonstrating the underlying yin-yang relationship between them for the last time. Yin-Yang & Kawabatas Place in the Topography of Asian Culture Yin-yang is mentioned only once in a quotation from the old local history book to explain the coolness one can feel when wearing a chijimi garment in midsummer. In addition, Kawabata stated that he read the old book after he had written most of his novel but before he added a concluding chapter originally titled Sekichu kaji (A re in snow, 1940) that begins with the chijimi episode (Kawabata 1949, 38889). Nevertheless, yin-yang turns out to entwine the two women implicitly throughout the story. As in the symbol of light and darkness, two competing yet complementing ele-ments are present in a constant ow to achieve desired purgation of the pro-tagonists excessive modern self-consciousness, while giving coherence to the apparently irregular plot structure. Thus, the yin-yang that underlies Snow Country ascertains Kawabatas place in the topography of Asian cul-ture beyond widely recognized Buddhist inuences. Notes

1Yin-yang is often combined with wu-xing (ve agents or phases). Yin-yang wu-xing offers a complex system that operates through cyclical change involving the ve

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elements of wood, re, earth, metal, and water. This paper considers the cyclicality of wu-xing as unessential for the discussion at hand and thus focuses on the contrastive nature of yin-yang.

2For a review of J. Martin Holmans 2006 translation of Kawabatas Koto, see Thorn-dike (2008). References Ames, Roger T. 2003. Yin and yang. In Encyclopedia of Chinese philosophy, ed. Antonio S.

Cua, 84647. New York: Routledge. Cheng, Chung-ying. 2009. The yi-jing and yin-yang way of thinking. In History of Chinese

philosophy, ed. Bo Mou, 71106. Vol. 3 of Routledge history of world philosophies. New York: Routledge.

Kawabata Yasunari . 1949. Dokuei jimei [A sole shadow of my life]. In Vol. 33 of Kawabata Yasunari zenshu [The complete works of Kawa-bata Yasunari], ed. Inoue Yasushi , Nakamura Mitsuo , and Yama-moto Kenkichi , 267547. Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1982.

. 1956. Snow country, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker. New York: Vintage Inter-national, 1996.

Mori, Masaki. 2004. Kawabatas mirrored poetics. Japan Studies Review 8: 5168. . 2007. Symbiotic conict in Snow country. Japan Studies Review 11: 5172. Thorndike, Jonathan. 2008. Review of The old capital, by Yasunari Kawabata (trans.

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