Again And Again, The Cicada's Untiring Cry

However, As Words Become Particularized, And As Men Begin - In However Small A Way - To Use Them In Personal, Arbitrary Ways, So Their Transformation Into Art Begins. It Was Words Of This Kind That, Descending On Me Like A Swarm Of Winged Insects, Seized On My Individuality And Sought To Shut Me Up Within It. Nevertheless, Despite The Enemy's Depredations Upon My Person, I Turned Their Universality - At Once A Weapon And A Weakness - Back On Them, And To Some Extent Succeeded In Using Words To Universalize To My Own Individuality.

Time Is What Matters. As Time Goes By, You And I Will Be Carried Inexorably Into The Mainstream Of Our Period, Even Though We’re Unaware Of What It Is. And Later, When They Say That Young Men In The Early Taisho Era Thought, Dressed, Talked, In Such And Such A Way, They’ll Be Talking About You And Me. We’ll All Be Lumped Together…. In A Few Decades, People Will See You And The People You Despise As One And The Same, A Single Entity.

He Had Never Looked Forward To The Wisdom And Other Vaunted Benefits Of Old Age. Would He Be Able To Die Young—and If Possible Free Of All Pain? A Graceful Death—as A Richly Patterned Kimono, Thrown Carelessly Across A Polished Table, Slides Unobtrusively Down Into The Darkness Of The Floor Beneath. A Death Marked By Elegance.

An Ugliness Unfurled In The Moonlight And Soft Shadow And Suffused The Whole World. If I Were An Amoeba, He Thought, With An Infinitesimal Body, I Could Defeat Ugliness. A Man Isn’t Tiny Or Giant Enough To Defeat Anything.

A Samurai Is A Total Human Being, Whereas A Man Who Is Completely Absorbed In His Technical Skill Has Degenerated Into A ‘function’, One Cog In A Machine.