Japanese lets a sentence stand with no subject at all. The most famous instance of that is the opening of Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country (Yukiguni, 1937). Here we take its first four paragraphs and read them, one point at a time, against the Japanese-grammar basics we drew out of Mishima.
Coming out through the long border tunnel, one was in the snow country. The floor of the night had turned white. The train drew up at a signal stop. From the seat opposite, the girl rose and came over, and let down the glass window in front of Shimamura. The chill of the snow flowed in. Leaning right out of the window, the girl called out as though toward something far away: “Statio-o-n master! Statio-o-n master!” The man who came treading slowly across the snow, a lamp held low, had his muffler wound up over his nose, and the fur of his cap hung down over his ears.
— Yasunari Kawabata, opening of Snow Country (Shincho Bunko); L/LAB working translation, quoted for analysis
1. No subject — who “came out of the tunnel”?
The famous first sentence has no subject at all — not “the train,” not “I,” not “Shimamura,” just nothing. Japanese omits whatever the context supplies; here the context barely supplies it, and whether it is the train or the sensation of the passenger that “came out of the tunnel” is deliberately fused.
The structure is plain: “[no subject] come out of the tunnel” + to + “was the snow country.”
- to is the conditional/sequential link: “when A, (then) B” — “having done A, there was B.”
- de atta is the past of the nominal copula de aru. It takes “it is the snow country,” makes it written and declarative, and adds past -ta. Finishing a sentence with a noun rather than a verb is one of the basic Japanese patterns (A wa B da).
In English you have to supply the train as the subject. Japanese completes the sentence with that seat empty.
2. “The floor of the night” — a metaphor as the subject
Sentence 2: yoru no soko ga shiroku natta — “the floor of the night had turned white.” The subject is “the floor of the night,” a metaphor for the deepest part of the darkness. Japanese is happy to put a figure of speech straight into the subject slot. The predicate is the intransitive shiroku naru, “become white” — nobody whitened it; it turned white by itself.
Sentence 3, “the train drew up at a signal stop,” is intransitive too (tomaru, “stop”). Three sentences in, every event is a plain -ta — an occurrence that belongs to no one’s action.
3. Introduce with ga, take up again with wa
The division of labour between ga and wa shows cleanly here (see the basics).
- ga = entrance: “the train ga stopped,” “the girl ga rose and came,” “the chill of the snow ga flowed in.” Each is stepping onto the stage for the first time.
- wa = topic / contrast: “the girl wa leaned right out” — the girl just introduced with ga is now retaken as the topic. The final “the man wa … had the fur hanging over his ears” sets the man against that girl.
The point-of-view character, Shimamura, arrives not as “Shimamura ga” or “Shimamura wa” but inside “the glass window in front of Shimamura no” — a possessive no. The central character slips in, grammatically, like a bit player.
4. The camera moves — the point of view shifts without a subject
Instead of setting up a subject, the movement of the gaze carries the prose. Out of the tunnel, a sweep across the whole snow country, a drop to “the floor of the night,” a stop at the train, the window opening, in on the girl, out after her voice into the distance, onto the man treading through the snow, and finally a zoom to the fur hanging over his ears, where it halts.
The narrating “I” never appears. Who is seeing is left unsaid; only what is seen, and in what order is laid down. Subject ellipsis and this impersonal camera work are two sides of one thing.
5. Description is piled before the noun
The subject of the last sentence is “the man” (otoko), but a long adnominal clause — “came treading slowly over the snow, a lamp held low” — is stacked in front of it. Japanese puts everything that modifies a noun before the noun (head-final). English attaches it afterward with a relative pronoun (the man who came…). Japanese has no relative pronoun; the modifying clause always comes first.
6. -te ita — a state that is still going on
The closing word is tarete ita — not tareta (a single action) but tarete ita, “was hanging,” a state being watched as it continues. The earlier “turned white,” “stopped,” “let down,” “flowed in” are the point-marking -ta. After several of those, the paragraph closes on an image that has stopped moving. That stillness quietly settles the tension of the opening.
7. Commas, and the direct voice
- “wound his muffler up over his nose (tsutsumi), and let the fur of his cap hang over his ears” — tsutsumi is the continuative form: a short “wrapped, and then,” joining two actions with a comma.
- “as though calling toward something far away,” — a simile. The text frames the sound as a shout-like utterance before the direct speech begins.
- “Statio-o-n master!” — the drawn-out call is written with an elongating katakana a (eki-chō-sa-a-n). The sound of speech is copied straight onto the page.
In sum — the Japanese basics this passage shows
| Feature | In the text |
|---|---|
| The subject can be left unsaid | ”[ ] come out of the tunnel, and it was the snow country” — a full sentence, no subject |
| Finish with a noun (nominal predicate) | yukiguni de atta = de aru + past |
| ga = entrance / wa = topic, contrast | train ga, girl ga, cold ga / girl wa, man wa |
| The point-of-view character enters quietly | “in front of Shimamura no” — a possessive |
| Move the point of view without naming a subject | tunnel → snow country → floor of night → … → fur on the man’s ears |
| Description before the noun (head-final) | “came treading slowly over the snow + man” |
| -ta = action / -te ita = state | stopped, let down / was hanging |
| Continuative form strings actions together | “wrapped, … was hanging” |
The opening of Snow Country takes the Japanese property that a sentence needs no subject and works it all the way out — as an impersonal camera moving from landscape to person. Even stripped down to the bare grammar, these four paragraphs are a worked example of almost every basic point.
The companion piece from the same angle: “Basic Japanese Grammar in Three Sentences from Mishima.” From the side of style: “Reading Japanese Narration in the Opening of Mishima’s The Sound of Waves” and “Learning Japanese Prose from the First Sentence of Sōseki’s Kokoro.”
