Snow Country

Shimamura is one of Snow Country’s two protagonists and is an antihero. A wealthy man from Tokyo who has a wife and children at home, he intermittently travels to an onsen town in snow country in search of pleasure. This selfish, duty-shirking way of existing subverts all heroic expectations; he is not honest with himself or others, empathetic, or on a journey with attainable goals. Instead, he goes wherever he wants, doing whatever pleases him, because he is wealthy enough to do so. Komako passive-aggressively remarks on his exorbitant funds more than once: “With you it’s not a question of money, is it? Have you always had so much to spend?” (80-81). Even though Shimamura rarely thinks of his wealth, it is a key component in how others perceive him, and it establishes a power dynamic between him and the people of snow country that he is unaware of. In his quest to find the chijimi artisans, Shimamura also unthinkingly wields his privilege, asking a storekeeper about some local Buddhist nuns: “What do they do with themselves, do you suppose, shut up together through the snows? Maybe we could set them to making Chijimi” (159).