Status Updates From The Dancing Girl of Izu and...

“As death approaches, memory erodes. Recent memories are the first to succumb. Death works its way backward until it reaches memory’s earliest beginnings. Then memory flares up for an instant, just like a flame about to go out. That is the ‘prayer in the mother tongue.’”

“The more distant my connection with the deceased, the more I felt moved to go to the cemetery, accompanied by my own memories, to burn incense and press my palms together in devotion to those memories. So it was that as a youth, my decorous behavior at the funerals of strangers was never feigned; rather, it was a manifestation of the capacity for sadness I had within myself.”

“The mystery of having experienced something in the past but not remembering it is still a mystery to me now at the age of fifty.”

“The dancing girl’s most beautiful feature was her sparkling big dark eyes. The curve of her double eyelids was unspeakably lovely. Next was her flowerlike smile. In her case, the word ‘flowerlike’ was absolutely accurate.”