Relationships come and go, but the associations that come along with them can be significant of something bigger. In Yukio Mishima's Thermos Bottles, a Japanese businessman has an extended stay in San Francisco away from his family in which he runs into an old lover. In the story, Mishima symbolically displays the extinction of Imperial Japan through his characters' mannerisms and subtle aspects of it. The symbol of the samurai and geisha within Kawase's relationships with Kimiko and Asaka embody Mishima's concept of artificiality in the Japanese domestic scene. Kawase and Kimiko had a traditional and dominance-based relationship in their marriage. They lived customary lives in which Kimiko was loyal and dependent of her husband. Though in his absence, infidelity caused a rift between the two sides of the family. Kawase disregarded his family's "loneliness" (56) the night in San Francisco where Asaka "stayed the night" (54). Kawase and Kimiko have a relationship in which their roles are similar to those of a samurai and geisha. Although they are married, Kawase only gives so much concern for his wife while staying in San Francisco. Instead of returning home to her, he put it off to spend time with a woman whom he had an affair with. The samurai, similar to Kawase, did not fully commit to a geisha as she was used for pleasure or entertainment. Kimiko likewise respected and highly regarded her husband as would a geisha to a samurai. The two's extramarital affairs exemplify the samurai and geisha's satisfying but disloyal relationship. Though the geisha and samurai's roles and Kimiko and Kawase's roles contrast, aspects of the marriage are what make up the other association. Considering that Asaka was originally a geisha, her relationship with Kawase was one of brisk "expediency" (53). Kawase made sure "all his relations with women contained a tacit understanding that he would not marry," (53) and he regarded Asaka similar to how her other customers would have. With Asaka now being westernized, Mishima introduces a new approach of viewing the Japanese domestic scene with an artificial point of view that is also significant of the samurai-geisha symbol. The two had no intent of adding intimacy to their affair since Kawase preferred not to officially commit to a woman, similar to the samurai going to the geisha for pleasurable and companionship purposes rather than faithfulness. Whether it was serving her patron or temporarily pleasing Kawase, Asaka has played a character of service in her time as a geisha and as a businesswoman. Moreover, Kawase was always very fond of Asaka but did not view her as spousal material because of her image as a geisha. The characters within Thermos Bottles are significant of much more than their actual roles in that their symbolic roles hint at Mishima's central idea of the end of traditional Japan. Aspects of artificiality regarding the family are found within Kawase's relationships with Kimiko and Asaka, standing for the factors that contributed in creating the new insincere and culture-lacking generation of Japan. Kawase's relationships with the two are symbolic of the traditional ways of the samurai and geisha that Mishima .Though, certain aspects of the two relationships, such as the offspring that resulted, signify that the modern Japan is completely different than Mishima's ideal conservative Japan. The relationships between these characters suggest that Japan was once at a position of honor and tradition that was overcame by its new ways of the West and artificiality.