His elegance was the thorn. And he was well aware that his aversion to coarseness, his delight in refinement, were futile; he was a plant without roots. Without meaning to undermine his family, without wanting to violate its traditions, he was condemned to do so by his very nature. And this poison would stunt his own life as it destroyed his family.

Honda was right. It was not his books that had drained him of energy but his dreams. A whole library wouldn’t have exhausted him as much as his constant dreaming night after night.

“I’m convinced that the trouble with you is, you’re horribly greedy. Greedy men are apt to seem miserable. Look, what more could you want than a day like this?”

her head bent forward, and even at that distance the white of the nape of her neck was visible to Kiyoaki. It made him think of Princess Kasuga and her creamy white neck, something that was never far from his mind.

But now he caught sight of the profile of the woman in the aquamarine kimono and recognized Satoko. His fantasies were shattered. Why hadn’t he recognized her earlier? Probably his whim that the beautiful girl should be a total stranger.

“Oh, it’s Satoko. Did I never show you her picture?” answered Kiyoaki, speaking her name with cool indifference. Satoko, the girl on the shore , was certainly a beauty. Kiyoaki, however, seemed determined to ignore this. For he knew that Satoko was in love with him. This instinctive rejection of anyone who showed him affection, this need to react with cold disdain, were a failing of Kiyoaki’s that no one could have known better than Honda, who saw this pride as a kind of tumor that had taken hold of Kiyoaki when he was no more than thirteen and had first had to endure people making a fuss over his looks. Like a silvery bloom of mold, it would spread at the slightest touch. Perhaps, in fact, the dangerous attraction that Kiyoaki’s friendship held for Honda was rooted in the same impulse . So many others had attempted to befriend Kiyoaki, only to be rewarded for their pains with his mockery and contempt. In challenging Kiyoaki’s caustic reserve, Honda alone had been skilled enough to escape disaster. Perhaps he was mistaken, but he wondered if his own acute dislike for Kiyoaki’s gloom-faced tutor sprang from the latter’s expression of perpetual defeat.

“Satoko never misses a chance to come here. She’s taking advantage of her great-aunt,” grumbled Kiyoaki with a show of bad temper, while helping Honda by hurrying to cast off the boat. Honda, however, viewed Kiyoaki’s haste and his grumbling with some skepticism. The way Kiyoaki had lost patience with Honda’s steady, methodical movements and had seizedthe rough rope in his own unseasoned white hands to try to help with the unpleasant task of unknotting it was enough to raise doubts about the Abbess being the cause of his eagerness. As Honda rowed back to the shore, Kiyoaki looked dizzy, his face picking up a red flush from the reflection of the maple leaves floating on the water. He nervously avoided Honda’s eyes in an attempt to deny his vulnerability to Satoko. For each moment brought him closer to the young woman who knew altogether toomuch about him, about his childhood, even about his body’s most intimate details, and to whom he seemed tied by almost overwhelming bonds of emotion.

Here is the letter kiyoaki wrote to satoko

“Why is it that at times like this, there is never anyone to rely on,” Kiyoaki muttered to himself as he fled through the long corridor that led back to the main house from the Western one. He thought of Honda, but his exacting standards of friendship made him dismiss that possibility. The night wind howled at the windows of the passageway with its line of dim lanterns stretching into the distance. Suddenly afraid that someone might see him and wonder at his running and being out of breath like this, he stopped, and as he rested his elbows on the ornamental window frame and pretended to stare out into the garden, he tried desperately to put his thoughts in order. Unlike dreams, reality was not so easy to manipulate. He had to conceive a plan . It could not be anything vague and uncertain; it had to be as firmly compact as a pill, and with as sure and immediate a result. He was oppressed by a sense of his own weakness, and after the warmth of the room he had just left, the cold corridor made him shiver.

“Deeds proceed from the body, speech , and the mind, and result in either good or evil.”“In this world, the soul in conjunction with the body performs three kinds of act: good, indifferent, and evil.”
“That which proceeds from a man’s soul shall shape his soul; that which proceeds from his speech shall shape his speech, and deeds that proceed from his body shall shape his body.”“He who sins in body shall be a tree or grass in the next life, he who sins in speech shall be a bird or a beast, and he who sins in soul shall be reborn at the lowest level of caste.”“The man who retains a proper guard over his speech, his mind, and his body with regard to all living things— the man who
bridles his lust and his anger— shall achieve fulfillment. Total liberation shall be his.”“It is fitting that every man should employ his inherent wisdom to discern how the fate of his soul depends on his adherence or nonadherence to the law and that he should exert himself wholeheartedly in the faithful observance of the law.”