Status Updates From Rashomon Gate (Sugawara Aki...

"Sacrifice?" he cried. "What sacrifice, when I have spent the past weeks agonizing over losing you? I have worried about your reason for rejecting me until I could not concentrate on my work! I thought of my poverty and of my mother's difficult temperament, of my plain face and my dull conversation, my lack of poetic talent and my undistinguished career, and - driven to the point of insanity - even of another man."

When they let General Soga in, his horse was all lathered up. He saw me and took me inside. He told me that Grandfather had disappeared. Later Sakanoue arrived with the others. He said the gods had taken Grandfather away to be with them, and we must be happy about it and build a shrine to his memory. He also said he had married my sister. I told him he was lying and spat in his face. That's when he hit me.

It’s quite different. I guess I wouldn’t call it samurai fiction because there really aren’t any samurais in the stories I’ve read of the author’s. It’s the Japanese world of a long ago age and I find the descriptions of the clothing and customs and cuisine most interesting. Well, now we have some romance too and a murder. Things move ahead slowly.