A poetess who had died young of cancer had said in one of her poems that for her, on sleepless nights, 'the night offers toads and black dogs and cor… - Yasunari Kawabata

"Oh, to be laughed at when I have the courage to speak my heart. I don't want to live in a world like this."

-from "Diary of My Sixteenth Year"

Nothing could be more comfortable than writing about the ballet from books. A ballet he had never seen was an art in another world. It was an unrivaled armchair reverie, a lyric from some paradise. He called his work research, but it was actually free, uncontrolled fantasy. He preferred not to savor the ballet in the flesh; rather he savored the phantasms of his own dancing imagination, called up by Western books and pictures. It was like being in love with someone he had never seen.

Here in our mountains, the snow falls even on the maple leaves.