Learning From Japan's 'Special Heavy Snowfall Areas'

Japan’s innovations seem a wise response to the quirks of the country’s geography. In an introduction to the English translation of the novel Snow Country, by the Nobel Prize-winning Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata, the Japanese literature scholar Edward Seidensticker explains the phenomenon: “In the winter, cold winds blow down from Siberia, pick up moisture over the Japan Sea, and drop it as snow when they strike the mountains of Japan.”