In Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country, beauty and the sublime are represented as imperfect and even destructive forces. This is in line with the Japanese aesthetic concept of wabi-sabi, the acceptance of imperfection, incompleteness, and transience as central elements of beauty.

Snow Country describes a love affair between Shimamura, a wealthy aesthete from Tokyo, and Komako, a provincial geisha. Shimamura is an expert on ballet, a highly refined art form, and his aesthetic appreciation often seems to limit his humanity rather than increasing his capacity for sympathy. Beauty and the sublime transport him into a world of his own, which increases his isolation and has a corrosive effect on his relationship with Komako.

At the end of the novel, Shimamura and Komako both witness a fire in which a man is killed. Shimamura, however, is absorbed in the contemplation of the fire, and the beauty of the night sky. This event encapsulates the way in which the experience of beauty brings out his worst qualities, leading to a corresponding moral ugliness of which Shimamura himself is aware.