"Tanizaki wrote clear, rational sentences," Mr. Seidensticker wrote [in his autobiography Tokyo Central]. "I do not, certainly, wish to suggest that I disapprove of such sentences; but translating them is not very interesting. There was little I felt inclined to ask Tanizaki about."

Not so with Kawabata. "Do you not, sensei, find this a rather impenetrable passage?" Mr. Seidensticker recalled asking him, ever so gently, during the translation of "Snow Country."

"He would dutifully scrutinize the passage, and answer: 'Yes,' " Mr. Seidensticker wrote. "Nothing more."

(From Seidensticker's obit in the NYT 8/31/07)

beautiful and tragic story - Japan cultural romance at its best.

Snow Country is the story of a geisha who gives herself without illusions and with undismayed directness to a love affair foredoomed to transience.

"Baffling, disturbing and often as bleak as the Japanese terrain with its face to the winter, the novel is still a work of art." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

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