It may be said that the Master was plagued in his last match by modern rationalism, to which fussy rules were everything, from which all the grace an… - Yasunari Kawabata

From the way of Go the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation.

From the way of Go, the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation. The road to advancement in rank, which controlled the life of a player, had become a meticulous point system. One conducted the battle only to win, and there was no margin for remembering the dignity and the fragrance of Go as an art.

Even if you took it as cascading snowy mountains,it was not a cool snow-white. The cold of the snow and it's warm colour made a kind of music.

Among flower vases, the ware that is given the highest rank is old Iga, from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it commands the highest price. When old Iga has been dampened, its colors and its glow take on a beauty such as to awaken on afresh. Iga was fired at very high temperatures. The straw ash and the smoke from the fuel fell and flowed against the surface, and as the temperature dropped, became a sort of glaze. Because the colors were not fabricated but were rather the result of nature at work in the kiln, color patterns emerged in such varieties as to be called quirks and freaks of the kiln. The rough, austere, strong surfaces of old Iga take on a voluptuous glow when dampened. It breathes to the rhythm of the dew of the flowers.

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