The Setting Sun

Snakes are a recurring symbol throughout The Setting Sun. Kazuko associates snakes with death, particularly with the death of her father. When he was dying, he called out that there was a snake near his bed. After he passed, Kazuko found snakes in the family garden. They were knotted around the trees, as if “to pay his spirit homage” (13). For Kazuko, the image of the garden infested with mourning snakes was ominous. The snakes do not just represent the death of her father, she believes, but The Decline of the Old Order, of which he was a part. The snakes are unfamiliar and alien but, with her father’s death, they are tightening their grip around the family’s property. Kazuko takes this to mean that her family will be driven out through death, decay, and decline. Kazuko’s conscious presentation of the snakes as a symbol of death foreshadows the grief that she will experience in the future.

In the present day, Kazuko finds a nest of snake eggs in the garden of the small house in Izu. Kazuko tries to burn the eggs but does not succeed. She cannot burn the eggs, just as she cannot avert her family’s decline.