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I'm failing to see how this is Nobel prize worthy. Maybe the beauty of this story was lost in translation or maybe I'm just too repulsed by the narrator to care about the lyrical prose and the symbolism. I am so happy to have not been born in Japan, especially in that period. Why this is described as a love story is beyond me.

We have Shimamura, a wealthy, bland, married man who travels to a hot spring so he can spend some of his money on treating women like objects because he needs to release his energy. We never get a sense of who he really is, he never thinks about his family. Most of his thoughts are dedicated to describing in painful details the women he interacts with in the town. The two women, Komako and Yoko, are desirable and lovable to him because he thinks they're young and pure, have the perfect skin and their voice reflects this purity and not because of who they are. Who they are is not important. What's important is their appearance. I've encountered this theme, of a submissive female character making an appearance just so she can inflate the ego of a pretentious, boring, aging man, so many times in famous award winning books that I find the prospect of reading another similar book very off-putting.

I'm pretty sure this was not the author's intention, and everything was supposed to be about Shimamura, but the predominant feeling after reading this book is actually sadness. Sadness for Komako and her condition. Her mood swings, peculiar thought process, alcohol abuse and bursts of anger portray a truly broken young woman who's not at piece with the fact that she's a geisha; a lonely woman you yearns for genuine affection, intimacy and does not know how to ask for it.

Overall I found the book monotonous and pointless.