23 What Komako thinks first is all about money. People cannot live their life
without money although many people said that money is not everything. Back to reality of life, Komako has to get more and more money. After retouching her
face in the mirror, she would stand up to leave. “Back to work, I’m all business. Business, business.” p.128. What Komako is thinking about reveals that she is a
tough person.
4.1.4 Introvert
Komako’s past life can represent her personality. Komako is a woman who always keeps her memories of life so that she can reflect on what she has
done. She spends much of her time by doing everything alone. She does not have someone to talk to. In this life, people may need to express themselves by
communicating with others. On the other hand, people may use another thing to express themselves. In this situation, Komako uses diary as the media to write
about her journey of life. She writes anything about what happens in her life. Komako starts to write diary since she was 16 years old. It has been a long time
by the time she meets Shimamura who makes the best entries for her diary. “All I have to do is look in my diary.”
“You keep a diary?” “It’s always fun to read an old diary. But I don’t hide anything when I write in
my diary, and sometimes I’m ashamed to look at it myself.” p.40
“And you’ve kept the diary all this time? Yes. The year I was sixteen and this year have been the best.” p.41
Although she is an introvert, Komako is a smart person. Her thought is not limited by her social interaction. As an introvert, she spends her time by doing
24 something that can help her enjoy life. In writing the diary, she does not only
write about what happened in her life but also writes about her opinion about literary works. It shows that she is smart and open-minded. Although she lives in
a country area, she still spends a little bit of her time by reading magazine or literary works. After reading those literary works, she tries to give her opinion or
comment on what she thinks happened in the story. She can understand the story and comprehend it by relating the characters.
“You write down your criticisms, do you? I could never do anything like that. I just write down the author and the characters and how they are related to
each other. That is about all.”
Shimamura asks her about her purpose of writing about the criticisms of literary works. Shimamura asks whether it is useful for her or not because he
thinks that what she has done is useless. Komako knows about it and agrees with Shimamura’s opinion that it is a waste effort. Although she says that it is no use, it
shows that she can think well than the other people around her. It implies that she understand about life. “But what good does it do? … A complete waste effort,”
she answered brightly, as though the admission meant little to her. p.41
Komako has been living alone since she was sixteen when she was in Tokyo. When she comes to Snow Country, she is alone. When she meets people
who she really feels comfortable, she can reveal her burden. It looks that she is different with her usual activity. She can be another people whom she wants to be.
She talked on feverishly, as though she had been starved for someone who would listen to her, and presently began to show an ease and abandon that
revealed her to be at heart a woman of the pleasure quarters after all. And she seemed in general to know what there was to know about men. p.19
