When I first read Snow Country, what drew me in most was probably Komako’s way of speaking. It had a kind of beautiful incoherence—though that may not be the right way to put it.

She was completely unreserved about affairs between men and women, and teased people about them. And every so often she would say something that seemed to come from nowhere: “It’s so cold,” or “Like a fool.” She was as cute as a carp suddenly surfacing in a pond to blow a bubble.

In Snow Country, Shimamura describes Komako as clean and fair-skinned, as though she would blush from her face all the way down the back of her neck, like some adorable animal. In Love in Yushima, Chōkichi refuses a soldier’s harassment and slaps him. When she is pursued and hides among an opera troupe to slip past them, she gives me the same feeling. Innocence and romance seem to be a geisha’s loveliest traits.

Komako once told Shimamura to visit her every year; it would be enough just to meet once and stay for a while. Chōkichi also tells Kamitsuki that even if he cannot marry her, she does not want to trouble him. She can support him. She can be a geisha all her life, as long as he does not abandon her. Their devotion seems the same, though one is in Tokyo and the other in snow country—perhaps Hokkaido or Kyoto, but “snow country” always feels more fitting.

There is something else: the love of Chōkichi and Komako transcends sex.

When Chōkichi and Kamitsuki share a bed, the scholar Kamitsuki burns with desire. He says that he has retained only a thread of reason, as if a cold dragon protects his body.

But Chōkichi is the opposite:

One morning, Chōkichi suddenly woke up and shook the half-asleep Kamitsuki awake. Looking around in surprise, she told him about her dream. In it, she stood in the dark holding three bunches of unopened iris flowers. Then everything around her suddenly brightened, and sunlight shone in. Bathed in golden light, she watched the three bunches of iris flowers bloom together in an instant. “Why is that?” she asked Kamitsuki with innocent delight. Kamitsuki was trapped in a nightmare, tormented in an illusion and drenched in cold sweat. Hearing her dream, he felt ashamed and blushed. Beside that holy white lotus, unstained though it grew from mud, his own heart seemed filthy. Only then did the scholar deeply understand Chōkichi’s spotless heart.

It could be said that reason and instinctual sexual desire do not simply trade places: having more of one does not mean having less of the other.

Love in Yushima gave me a chance to revisit an old dream. I once fell at Komako’s feet, and now I find again that perhaps what I love is simply girls like Chōkichi and Komako: innocent and clean. Yet they are also resilient. That is how Komako can play the clearest notes on her shamisen in winter, and how Chōkichi can survive being a bonded geisha without losing the integrity of her character.

Perhaps they understand the noblest kind of love in this world.