From the way of Go the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation.

THE TRAIN came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.

Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.

Along the coast the sea roars, and inland the mountains roar – the roaring at the center, like a distant clap of thunder.

But a haiku by Buson came into his mind: 'I try to forget this senile love; a chilly autumn shower.' The gloom only grew denser.

The sound of the freezing of snow over the land seemed to roar deep into the earth. There was no moon. The stars, almost too many of them to be true, came forward so brightly that it was as if they were falling with the swiftness of the void. As the stars came nearer, the sky retreated deeper and deeper into the night color. The layers of the Border Range, indistinguishable one from another, cast their heaviness at the skirt of the starry sky in a blackness grave and somber enough to communicate their mass. The whole of the night scene came together in a clear, tranquil harmony.

Does pain go away and leave no trace, then?’ ‘You sometimes even feel sentimental for it.