iwhospeakawkwardly asked: I thought I should let you know that I read Beauty & Sadness on sunday and while I wouldn't exactly say I enjoyed reading it (because it was just beyond depressing), I really did like the book and found it much more enthralling than The Master of Go.

I’m so glad to hear that! I looked for Beauty & Sadness in Strand and St. Mark’s Bookshop while I was in NYC last week, but neither had any Kawabata, which was weird, because my school library has Kawabata, and my school library has pretty limited fiction. I hope I can find it elsewhere sometime soon. (I did buy like, six other Japanese novels, not counting A Pale View of the Hills, so I can’t really complain.)