Snow Country
Writing process

Gwenn Boardman Petersen uses Snow Country as an example of how Kawabata often composed his works. While writing that Japanese novelists often publish "their works in serial form and under various titles" she observes Kawabata is "further noted for his habit of rewriting, adding segments, and making changes in titles and content alike." The first segment, titled Yugeshiki no Kagami ("Mirror of the Evening Scene") appeared in Bungeishunjū January 1935. Kawabata later wrote that he could not finish his manuscript by the submission deadline of this literary journal, and decided to keep writing and submit a second version of this segment, titled Shiroi Asa no Kagami ("Mirror of a White Morning") to the general-interest magazine Kaizō several days later.

Kawabata continued to write about the characters, and five more segments were published over the next years: Monogatari ("Story" or "Tale") and Toro ("Futile Efforts") appeared in the journal Nihon Hyoron in the November and December 1935 issues; Kaya no Hana ("Miscanthus Flower") appeared in Chuo Koron August 1936; Hi no Makura ("Pillow of Fire") in Bungeishunjū October 1936; and Temariuta ("Handball Song") was published in Kaizō May 1937. He combined these segments into a "complete" Snow Country, making numerous changes to the texts as they appeared in the journals, which was published in June 1937.

Kawabata restarted work on the novel after a three-year break, again adding new chapters and again publishing in two separate journals, in 1940 and 1941. He re-wrote the last two sections, merging them into a single piece, published in a journal in 1946. Another additional piece arrived in 1947. Finally, in 1948, the novel reached its final form, an integration of nine separately published works.

Kawabata himself visited the Yuzawa onsen and worked on the novel there. The room in the hotel where he was staying is preserved as a museum.

Kawabata again returned to Snow Country near the end of his life. A few months before his death in 1972, he wrote an abbreviated version of the work, which he titled "Gleanings from Snow Country", that shortened the novel to a few spare pages, a length that placed it among his Palm-of-the-Hand Stories, a form to which Kawabata devoted particular attention for more than 50 years. An English translation of "Gleanings from Snow Country" was published in 1988 by J. Martin Holman, in the collection Palm-of-the-Hand Stories.
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