of a marquis a school prefect Reception A writer for Kirkus Reviews wrote, "Mishima's novel begins slowly but picks up momentum in the second half along with episodes of sly humor as well as the tragedy of its finale." In The New York Times, Hortense Calisher stated that Spring Snow is praiseworthy for "its marvelous incidentals, graphic and philosophic, and for its scene-gazing [...] no doubt partially researched, but the author's vitality and native omniscience are triumphant." Charles Solomon wrote in 1990 that "the four novels remain one of the outstanding works of 20th-Century literature and a summary of the author’s life and work." In 2014, Yasser Nasser of The Bubble lauded Spring Snow as easily the best of the Sea of Fertility tetralogy, as well as "one of those novels of the last century that is almost perfectly written, capturing a sense of tragedy that Japanese literature has always been so wont to do. [...] Mishima manages to deftly avoid any entanglement in the melodramatic." Nasser said the book is tonally consistent and that the novelist sticks to narrative "without getting lost in dream-like descriptions" like Yasunari Kawabata. A writer for The Quill stated that in Spring Snow Mishima "shows the sheer beauty and power that Japanese poetry can carry", and the reviewer described a speech about changing history as "perhaps [...] comparable to Shakespeare's 'To be, or not to be'" soliloquy. In 2014, the novel was ranked in The Telegraph as one of the 10 all-time greatest Asian novels. References to other works The screen in Kiyoaki's bedroom has poems by Han Shan (ch. 5) The kabuki plays that the five watch at the Imperial Theatre, near Hibiya Park in Tokyo, are Lion Dance (about two rival generals of the Kamakura period) and The Rise and Fall of the Taira (ch. 8) Iinuma's favourite books in the library include the works of Han Fei, the Testament of Seiken of Asami Keisai (1652-1711), The Eighteen Histories, and Commentaries on the Four Classics; also, a poem by Kayo Honen called Song of a Noble Heart (ch. 14) The Marquise talks about how she played The Green of the Pines on the piano while accompanied by a koto and shamisen (ch. 18) While very young, Kiyoaki and Satoko copied verses from the "Okura One Hundred Poets" (Japanese Ogura Hyakunin Isshu) card-game into an album: the poems by Minamoto no Shigeyuki and