Again And Again, The Cicada's Untiring Cry

…the Samurai Ethic Is A Political Science Of The Heart, Designed To Control Such Discouragement And Fatigue In Order To Avoid Showing Them To Others. It Was Thought More Important To Look Healthy Than To Be Healthy, And More Important To Seem Bold And Daring Than To Be So. This View Of Morality, Since It Is Physiologically Based On The Special Vanity Peculiar To Men, Is Perhaps The Supreme Male View Of Morality.

When People Concentrate On The Idea Of Beauty, They Are, Without Realizing It, Confronted With The Darkest Thoughts That Exist In This World. That, I Suppose, Is How Human Beings Are Made.

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.

We Had Stretched Out Our Arms To Each Other And Supported Something In Our Joined Hands, But This Thing We Were Holding Was Like A Sort Of Gas That Exists When You Believe In Its Existence And Disappears When You Doubt. The Task Of Supporting It Seems Simple At First Glance, But Actually Requires An Ultimate Refinement Of Calculation And A Consummate Skill.

Pain, I Came To Feel, Might Well Prove To Be The Sole Proof Of The Persistence Of Consciousness Within The Flesh, The Sole Physical Expression Of Consciousness. As My Body Acquired Muscle, And In Turn Strength, There Was Gradually Born Within Me A Tendency Towards The Positive Acceptance Of Pain, And My Interest In Physical Suffering Deepened.