Kawabata's best-known novel, set in a remote hot-spring town in the snowy mountains of western Japan. Shimamura, a wealthy man from Tokyo, visits the town several times and grows involved with Komako, a local geisha. Their relationship is marked by distance, longing and the sense that something is always slipping away. Another young woman, Yoko, adds a quiet strain of mystery. With clear, spare images of snow, cold and light, the book became a model of Japanese modern literature and was central to Kawabata's Nobel Prize.