The protagonist runs toward her, but he trips in the crowd. As he’s jostled, his head falls back, and he sees the Milky Way in the night sky. The book ends there, with no resolution. It’s left to the reader to discover how the pieces fit together, why Kawabata thought he had said everything he needed to say. Why he decided not to give away more than this. The first time you read a story like this, maybe, you feel cheated, because you read stories to find out what happens, not to be dismissed on the cusp of finding out. Later, however, you might find that the silence itself comes to mean
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