Fiction

But you, well, you’re special to me. When I’m with you I feel something is just right. I believe in you. I like you. I don’t want to let you go. I was getting more and more confused, so I went to him and asked him what I should do.

All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific

My reaction was a lot like what we feel when we see unreality painted in a pleasant way.

In fact, I didn’t care about getting laid any more. Wandering around Shinjuku on a noisy Saturday night, observing the mysterious energy created by a mixture of sex and alcohol, I began to feel that my own desire was a puny thing.

“As I said before, I had been playing from the time I was four years old, but it occurred to me that I had never once played for myself. I had always been trying to pass a test or practise an assignment or impress somebody. Those are all important things, of course, if you are going to master an instrument. But after a certain age you have to start

On my way to the gate I passed several people, all wearing the same yellow raincapes that Naoko and Reiko wore, all with their hoods up. Colours shone with an exceptional clarity in the rain: the ground was a deep black, the pine branches a brilliant green, and the people wrapped in yellow looking like otherworldly spirits that were only allowed to

“But I can’t forget her,” I said. “I told Naoko I would go on waiting for her, but I couldn’t do it. I turned my back on her in the end. I’m not saying anyone’s to blame: it’s a problem for me myself. I do think that things would have worked out the same way even if I hadn’t turned my back on her. Naoko was choosing death all along. But that’s

“Where Watanabe and I are alike is, we don’t give a shit if nobody understands us,” Nagasawa said. “That’s what makes us different from everybody else. They’re all worried about whether the people around them understand them. But not me, and not Watanabe. We just don’t give a shit. Self and others are separate.” “Is this true?” Hatsumi asked me.

I thanked him and polished off the whole top box myself, though it had more than enough for two. After we had drunk as much sake as we could manage, he offered to put me up for the night, but when I said I would rather sleep alone on the beach, he left it at that. As he stood to go, he took a folded ¥5,000 note from his pocket and shoved it into