Got to 50% on this one, then tapped out. Beautiful scene setting and images. Protagonist I didn't care about or connect with. Found amusing Mishima's intensification of the device whereby plot logic is driven by miscommunication -- letters don't go astray, they are literally destroyed, multiple times!

- strangest feeling that I’ve read this book/heard this story before after coming to the ending where Satoko enters the convent. Where though?

- contemplating why so many authors set their stories amongst the upper class, in this case quasi royalty. Intended to make the story less mundane by removing all the economic barriers and inconveniences faced by normal people? Easy to write when characters don’t have to go to work or worry about the financial effects of chasing your beloved across the country?

- Mishima gives 18-19 year old boy too much credit here, find it hard to believe that Honda would be reflecting on medieval European law, or the Siamese princes giving lectures on Buddhism

- reading in translation of course, but a lot of the language seemed so overwrought and the description tedious. I’m all for long passages “about nothing” where we can simply appreciate the poésie of the language but do normal people really think in term of the heady metaphors Mishima ascribes to them here? Not in my experience, though I haven’t spent much time with early 20th century aristocrats either ( )

Story: 6.5 / 10
Characters: 9.5
Setting: 8.5
Prose: 10

The highest prose I can recall reading. Nevertheless, the story is not as good as the first read through 20 years ago, when I was a teenager. Could be because I haven't read much literary fiction since then though. Still my preferred Mishima book. ( )

First half: Greg Heffley
Second half: Raskolnikov ( )

This book was my introduction to the works of Mishima and while I had a very weird enjoyment of this novel, I sort of wish I'd started with something else of his that's maybe shorter or focuses more on one idea so I could feel him out better. But that's just a personal preference and doesn't take away from 'Spring Snow' itself.

Even though I had a great dislike of the MC, my boy Kiyoaki, for his fickle, childish, and borderline narcissistic attitudes he displays at the beginning (and then passionate delusions at the end), I was super invested in his story and how he suffers, (which I knew he would considering the gloomy foreshadowing is extremely heavy - even without my glasses I would've seen it coming a mile away).

Each theme of the book is explored deeply and is woven into a complex webbing where each point is interconnected. It's quite beautifully done. There's the transition of boyhood into manhood (or the perception of, and how it falters), the changing of an era and being born during in-between times, that there are people born now who fit better into the era of the past and those born who fit into an era to come, that passion is the epitome of youth and of life - that once it's realized and passes, the best part of life is now behind you.

I did have a good time reading about mens' nipples and chest hair, though, I've been told this is typical for Mishima and I have to say I appreciate it. ( )