If The World Changed, I Could Not

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.

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.

A Man Isn't Tiny Or Giant Enough To Defeat Anything.

As Usual, It Occurred To Me That Words Were The Only Thing That Could Possibly Save Me From This Situation. This Was A Characteristic Misunderstanding On My Part. When Action Was Needed, I Was Absorbed In Words; For Words Proceeded With Such Difficulty From My Mouth That I Was Intent On Them And Forgot All About Action. It Seemed To Me That Actions, Which Are Dazzling, Varied Things, Must Always Be Accompanied By Equally Dazzling And Equally Varied Words.

Isao Had Never Felt That He Might Want To Be A Woman. He Had Never Wished For Anything Else But To Be A Man, Live In A Manly Way, Die A Manly Death. To Be Thus A Man Was To Give Constant Proof Of One's Manliness-to Be More A Man Today Than Yesterday, More A Man Tomorrow Than Today. To Be A Man Was To Forge Ever Upward Toward The Peak Of Manhood, There To Die Amid The White Snows Of That Peak.