At the bottom, he finds the woman waiting for him, and the two feel an increased affection as they talk in a nearby cedar grove. However, Shimamura loses his interest in the geisha, goes to climb a mountain, and then runs down it with a great sense of release. The next day Shimamura surprises the woman by asking her to find a geisha for him, explaining that he does not want to ruin their friendship by becoming too involved with her though at first very reluctant, she eventually finds one. He and that woman grow closer as they find a common conversational interest in theater, and Shimamura beings to prize her as a friend rather than a sexual interest. Desiring a woman, he asks for a geisha, but since none are available he agrees to see a woman who is an amateur entertainer. At the time, Shimamura had just come down from a week of hiking in the mountains at the border of the village during the first time of spring. The two go to his room and begin to talk, whereupon the story returns to their first encounter. Arriving through the cold night at an inn in the town, Shimamura is startled to find the woman he knew, who has now become a geisha, waiting for him. Later when the train stops by a station and Yoko cries out to a stationmaster, Shimamura is also fascinated by the clarity of her voice. While on the train, he becomes fixated on Yoko, a girl of unusual beauty who is nursing a sick man, and he finds himself especially entranced by the reflection of her face on his window. As the season of heaviest snows in the region of western Japan known as the 'snow country' begins in December, the wealthy Tokyo dilettante Shimamura journeys to a hot spring town to see a woman (who will later be called Komako) he met there half a year ago.

Shimamura snow country