It may seem bizarre to compare the novel with Greek tragedies, but there's still a vestige of analogy, though in its core Buddhist. There's no melancholy, but still a strong feeling of loss. Life goes on, and on, and on, as river flows, in its course stirring eddies and waves, finally into the sea to perish. Some fade away in the course, prematurely; eddies stir and vanish without leaving a trace. Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, now green in youth, now withering on the ground; so generations in their course decay; so flourish these, when those are pass'd away. Sunset is lingering, taints every corner of the Kansai region, dyed in an elegiac golden redness, but over this red sunset, still, a sky of watery blue and the fresh scent of spring, the shivering of cherry blossoms. Every ritual and every miniscule details are that of death but yet also that of life, so frail, so precious, so destined to death and decay, but eternal for what it leaves: the memories of time.

This almost Mozartian intensity is hard to detect, but once it's felt, it lives on. What is to come is the great war and grave hardship, and the total annihilation of this old way of living, this aristocratic elegance, and the patience, the frail but beautiful rituals of life that is permeated by a premonition of death. But still, how splendid, and how graceful is the sunset, in its stubborn April fragrance, and the perseverance of frail human life.