After watching the 1954 film of this novel (Mikio Naruse) I wanted to read the book as well.
3rd person narrator, all through the mind and observations of an aging Ogata Shingo.
While the film ends with the stroll through the park, and with the lovely and gentle Kikuko choosing not to go back to her husband, the novel contiues on. Not only does she return home, but the depth of how horrid her husband is is further made clear by another plot event (I won't spoil it here).
There are no references to the war in the film, while it plays a larger, but still quiet, part in the book.
The novel includes a number of dreams. And also an explanation of the title, which is never made clear in the film (the house is on the edge of a small mountain, and Ogata can hear "sounds" from it - which he believes are the sounds of his oncoming death). We also watch the seasons change on the mountain from their garden.
If a parent's success is judged by the quality of his children, he is very much a failure - something he is very much aware of.
A changing post-war Japan, there are still geishas (and the men here make use of them) and also there are now women living on their own, and opening their own shops.
But the overall theme is of Ogata's aging (his memory loss is not well portrayed in the novel unfortunately), and his attraction to his early 20's daughter-in-law.
Kawabata's ability to portray both the internal and the day-to-day lives of his characters (and Ogata in particular here), and the older generation living in a New Japan, is a good reason he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968. His "Snow Country" is one of the few novels I have not only reread, but reread multiple times.
I need to read, and reread, more of him.