Beauty and sadness

Five swivel chairs were ranged along the other side of the observation car of the Kyoto express. Oki Toshio noticed that the one on the end was quietly revolving with the movement of the train. He could not take his eyes from it. The low armchairs on his side of the car did not swivel.

Oki was alone in the observation car. Slouched deep in his armchair, he watched the end chair turn. Not that it kept turning in the same direction, at the same speed: sometimes it went a little faster, or a little slower, or even stopped and began turning in the opposite direction. To look at that one revolving chair, wheeling before him in the empty car, made him feel lonely. Thoughts of the past began flickering through his mind.

It was the twenty-ninth of December. Oki was going to Kyoto to hear the New Year's Eve bells.


For how many years had he heard the tolling of those bells over the radio? How long ago had the broadcasts begun? Probably he had listened to them every year since then, and to the commentary by various announcers....

Translated from Japanese by Howard Hibbett