Spring Snow Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Yukio Mishima (Author), Brian Nishii (Narrator), Audible Studios (Publisher)

818 ratings

See all formats and editions

Amazon Price

New from

Used from

Kindle Edition

"Please retry"

$12.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Tankobon Hardcover

"Please retry"

—

$87.34

$42.83

Paperback

"Please retry"

$23.14

$16.21

$16.05

Kindle Edition
$12.99 Read with Our Free App
Audiobook
$0.00 Free with your Audible trial
Tankobon Hardcover
from $42.83

4 Used from $42.83 5 New from $87.34
Paperback
$23.14

19 Used from $16.05 19 New from $16.21

The first novel of Mishima's landmark tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility.

Spring Snow is set in Tokyo in 1912, when the hermetic world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders -- rich provincial families unburdened by tradition, whose money and vitality make them formidable contenders for social and political power. Among this rising new elite are the ambitious Matsugae, whose son has been raised in a family of the waning aristocracy, the elegant and attenuated Ayakura. Coming of age, he is caught up in the tensions between old and new -- fiercely loving and hating the exquisite, spirited Ayakura Satoko. He suffers in psychic paralysis until the shock of her engagement to a royal prince shows him the magnitude of his passion, and leads to a love affair that is as doomed as it was inevitable.

Listening Length

14 hours and 31 minutes
Author

Yukio Mishima
Narrator

Brian Nishii
Audible release date

Dec 22 2010
Language

English
Publisher

Audible Studios
ASIN

B071LCK5MY
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
See all details

1 credit a month good for any title of your choice, yours to keep.
The Plus Catalogue—listen all you want to thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts, and audiobooks.
Access to exclusive member-only sales, as well as 30% off your purchases of any additional titles.
After 30 days Audible is $14.95/month + applicable taxes. Renews automatically.

Learn more about membership

Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company

List Price: $31.27

You Save: $3.91 (13%)

By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions Of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Tax where applicable.

Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company

People who bought this also bought

Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea
Yukio Mishima
1,561
Audible Audiobook
Sun and Steel
Yukio Mishima
415
Audible Audiobook
Kafka on the Shore
Haruki Murakami
6,292
Audible Audiobook
The Sound of Waves
Yukio Mishima
555
Audible Audiobook
Norwegian Wood
Haruki Murakami
16,358
Audible Audiobook

Related to this topic

Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1

Pieces of Her
Karin Slaughter
11,942
in Women Sleuths

Audible Audiobook
Spare
Prince Harry The Duke of Sussex
56,540
in English History

Audible Audiobook
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
James Clear
124,558
in Organizational Behaviour

Audible Audiobook
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Book 1
J.K. Rowling
75,476
in Children's Books on Orphans & Foster Homes

Audible Audiobook
Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within
David Goggins
4,050
Audible Audiobook

Product details

Listening Length	14 hours and 31 minutes
Author	Yukio Mishima
Narrator	Brian Nishii
Audible.ca Release Date	December 22 2010
Publisher	Audible Studios
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B071LCK5MY
Best Sellers Rank	#41,468 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #1,241 in Classic Literature (Audible Books & Originals) #2,011 in Literary Fiction (Audible Books & Originals) #2,723 in Historical Fiction (Audible Books & Originals)

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5

818 global ratings

5 star		72%
4 star		18%
3 star		6%
2 star		1%
1 star		2%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from Canada

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

graham

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on December 2, 2021

Verified Purchase

I found it a little slow at time. The ending was very good

Helpful

Kiefer Claes

Read it

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on July 16, 2021

Verified Purchase

Such a beautifully constructed and executed story. Spring Snow quickly became one of my favorite novels that I have read so far.

Helpful

John Smith

Beautiful Novel

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 11, 2018

Verified Purchase

After not having read a novel since I was very young, this was the first I decided to pick up and try out. I've never read anything like this before and absolutely loved it.

Helpful

Hume An

beauty is a terrible thing

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 6, 2001

Mishima, in his writing, is often preoccupied with aesthetic beauty. His characters slaver after it, long to assume it, and when apprehension is discovered to be forever out of reach, they long to remove this aesthetic beauty, this otherwordly perfection from the earth vis a vis a dramatic spectacle, which in turn becomes beauty itself.
Along with this obsession with beauty is a suspicion or a questioning of the intrinsic utility of beauty. What is the purpose of perfection if such perfection is ineffectual and even inimical to the human condition apart from the fact that beauty is beauty is beauty . . . ad nauseum?
In many ways Mishima uses Spring Snow as a means of inverting the sentiment of Keats' notion of "Beauty is truth, truth is beauty . . ." However, unlike the spectacle that beauty evokes in some of Mishima's other writings (and even his life), the bubble of spectacle never pops in Spring Snow, instead, beauty ferments and spreads like cancer.
In this novel, Mishima's main characters, Satoka and Kiyoaki, are destroyed by their beauty, their elegance, their noble breeding. Kiyoaki is analogous to Hamlet in his diffidence and his psychic inertia. Moreover, his brilliant physical beauty compounds the aforementioned with an overly large measure of pride, which, along with noble breeding, hermetically seals him into a jar of dreams, self-doubt, anomie, and ennui. Satoka, likewise, is beautiful, perfect, and her perfection carries and transmits a self-possessed, cold, and almost painful glare to the public eye. However, to Kiyoaki, Satoka is a smoldering woman of passion, full of riddles and intrigue. Kiyoaki, inexperienced, prideful, and naïve, desires to reciprocate this passion only when it becomes taboo, and then he falls headlong into a brilliant and lavish darkness full of gauntness, full, blush moons, and supple waves. Their consummation is sweet but tinctured with doom.
Had the two had a grander purpose than getting drunk off this surfeit of poisonous love, had their hearts and minds been bound to something to divert them from their egocentricity, the story would have been far different. But in the end, as Romeo and Juliet's love dies, the love of Satoka and Kiyoaki dies.
However, unlike Shakespeare, Mishima denies the reader the succor of suicide. Satoka is left a tonsured, Buddhist nun, while Kiyoaki dies of pneumonia. The end of beauty is filled with emotion, but the beautiful are ineffectual, useless, and cannot ever perform substantive act that will secure their happiness or seal their fate (definitely not in the case of Kiyoaki, perhaps in the case of Satoka). However, beauty does not completely fade at the death of their love as Kiyoaki leaves his dream journal to his even-keeled, logical, and diligent friend, Honda. In this way beauty lives on, but exists not as truth but as germ or infection. Beauty dies, destroys, and spreads its seed. It is the spring snow, quiet, pure, each multi-tendriled snowflake delicate, unique, an unusual attenuation heralding the end of spring, girded by the assumption that another spring will come only for the deadly beauty of the quiet, pure spring snow to come again, to take root, and surreptitiously and gracefully destroy idle youth.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Angry Mofo

Read at once.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on May 29, 2002

I've only read two Mishima books so far, am reading a third now, and intend to get through 'em all. Alas, I fear that none will be as good as the first one I read - Spring Snow. I really didn't think people could still write like this in the 20th century. I mean, star-crossed, tragic love was an old subject by the time Shakespeare got to it - what made Mishima think he could write something new about it hundreds of years later? But something did, and I'm glad it did. For while there is a [very interesting] historical context to Spring Snow (tell me, what other book paints such a visceral portrait of early 20th century Japan?), the focus is on the love story. And no one writes love stories like Yukio Mishima. Somehow, it manages to avoid the gaping pitfalls of sentimentalism and melodrama, creating instead a world of great beauty and fragility that I was loath to leave when the book drew to its close.
If you read a biography of Mishima, you will likely find mountains of speculation concerning his various eccentricities (and that word is putting is nicely, methinks). Some will accuse him of right-wingery, others will rant about his "nationalism," etc. etc. etc. But I think that none of that applies. He was in no way a political person, just a hopelessly deluded romantic who still believed that romantic ideals had any place in modern society. This he applied to politics as well as to everything else. Spring Snow, fortunately, contains no politics, concentrating instead on romantic ideals as applied to the personal. The result is something that, while being Japanese through and through, is accessible to anyone. This book is worth reading for the marvelously poetic descriptions alone. I shan't say that it will "change your life," since that's cliche and more often than not utterly wrong, but I daresay that you will have an indelible impression made upon your mind. At first, you may not notice it, but as time passes, you will find that you remember large parts of Spring Snow on countless occasions, and you will find yourself recalling parts of it as examples of great beauty and purity, and reflexively applying them to your own life. And then you will cheer Mishima as quite possibly the last romantic on Earth. That is exactly what happened to me.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Randyll McDermott

A Modern Literary Masterpiece

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 26, 2003

This is the first work of Yukio Mishima's works that I have read. His writing style is beautiful. By passionately describing every aspect of the area where the scene takes place, he makes it feel like you are there, standing beside the main characters.
The main characters in Spring Snow are Kiyoaki Matsugae and Satoko Ayakura. Kiyoaki is the son of new money type of family. His peasant-born grandfather led the Matsugae family to greatness, and now they are a lower part of the nobility. To make their son elegant and refined, the Marquis and the Marquise Matsugae send their son, Kiyoaki to study with the ancient, noble Ayakura. It is there that Kiyoaki and Satoko meet. When the novel takes place, the two have never had any feelings for each other. But, the news that Satoko is engaged to marry an Imperial Prince causes Kiyoaki to realize that what was in front of him all along, Satoko, was the love of his life. So, they embark upon an affair.
I read this novel for pleasure, not for insight, and as such did not pick up on the underlying messages Mishima was trying to impart to the reader. However, this book is still a worthwhile read even if one does not fully understand it. The writing was very easy to read, and very beautiful; leading me to believe that the translator did his job well. Highly recommended.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Discerning

Poetic love story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 15, 2011

Verified Purchase

This isn't just a story. It is obvious from the first ripples that this book is quite introspective and illuminates Mishima himself. It is a tortured love story set amidst social obligation with underlying currents of pain and narcissism. 'The course of true love never did run smooth,' - naturally it is more interesting because of the restraints and the unusual character of Kiyoaki Matsugae. It is beautifully written with a thoughtful appreciation of nature and the changing seasons (even more than usual for a Japanese writer) which is relevant because the seasons are like a ticking clock. Time is evidently on the mind of Mishima. This is the first of four books in the Sea of Tranquillity tetralogy. I have taken a dip in it but I will save the swimming for later, once I have revived.

7 people found this helpful

Eoin Killeen

Truely gripping & beautifully poetic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 16, 2022

Verified Purchase

The novel starts out slow but quickly picks up pace. Mishima’s poetic writing style lends itself to vivid descriptions. I am looking forward to starting Runaway Horses!

James S

Excellent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 8, 2014

Verified Purchase

Great book, excellently written and excellently translated meaning it still has the same effect to an English reader it obviously has in Japan.

One person found this helpful

George Campbell

RE: Another Classic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 12, 2018

Verified Purchase

Mishima was a literary genius and Spring Snow is the work of an author at the height of his powers. Although the sequel Runaway Horses, is perhaps his best.

One person found this helpful

mrs f h lloyd

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 24, 2015

Verified Purchase

good read

See all reviews

Amazon Music Stream millions of songs	Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers	Amazon Business Everything for your business	Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon	Amazon Web Services Scalable Cloud Computing Services

Book Depository Books With Free Delivery Worldwide	Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations	IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities	Amazon Photos Unlimited Photo Storage Free With Prime	Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands

Warehouse Deals Open-Box Discounts	Whole Foods Market We Believe in Real Food	Amazon Renewed Like-new products you can trust	Blink Smart Security for Every Home

Spring Snow Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Free with an Audible trial $0.00$0.00

Buy with 1-Click $27.36$27.36

Most popular

People who bought this also bought

Related to this topic

Product details

Customer reviews

Top reviews from Canada

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Free with an Audible trial

$0.00

Buy with 1-Click

$27.36