Snow Country (雪国) is a very well-known novel by Yasunari Kawabata (川端康成) who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1968. Probably everyone who has grown up in Japan knows its opening line “国境の長いトンネルを抜けると雪国であった” [“The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country” (translation by Edward Seidensticker, 1996.)] Snow Country is a love story based in part on the author’s journey to Niigata in the far north of Japan. TV shows, movies, a play, etc. have all been made from this novel.
