… I thought of K0-san, and stood there looking sadly after the two departing figures, their diminuendo of boots and sandals. The old woman looks up at the sergeant with the expression of a mother who has at last discovered her strayed child. The most accurate word that I can select from my head’s whole range of Japanese and Chinese phrases is “hanging on.” The sergeant looks down on the old woman with the expression on one happy to have found lost and precious property. … I consequently could not say either that she clung to the sergeant or that she drew herself close to him. Soon the soldier’s mother appears, and I liked this excerpt: One soldier, a sergeant, reminds the narrator of his friend, Ko-san. Part I is a bit somber regarding the plot due to its description on the Russo-Japan war in Manchuria, then a key character leads us to a welcome scene for those soldiers who did not fall in the war. However, I preferred the three-part story, that is, “The Heredity of Taste” in which I could feel more comfortable and hopeful through my reading. Possibly I might be more optimistic after rereading them. I hoped I would enjoy more in reading the second which is mostly dialog-oriented between two characters, I wondered how I could appreciate it more than what I had thought and decided as a nearly unimpressive story. I found reading the first two stories, “Ten Nights of Dream” and “Hearing Things” tedious and vague due to my unfamiliarity with surrealism, especially in the first one.
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