Status Updates From Il padiglione d'oro

Abruptly I remembered what Kashiwagi had said to me on the day that we first met. It is when one is sitting on a well-mowed lawn on a beautiful spring afternoon, vaguely watching the sun as it shines through the leaves and makes patterns on the grass—it is at such times that cruelty suddenly springs up within us. Now I was confronting the waves and the rough north wind. There was no beautiful spring afternoon here.