A Dark Night’s Passing

We have a classic novel called “A Dark Night’s Passing（暗夜行路）” by Nagoya Shiga. Hero’s name is Kensaku. In the night train, he saw lights passing outside through the window. Then one light overlapped into the eye of passenger girl sitting in front of him. It was a beautiful moment that Kensaku was impressed.

 

The novel was written in Nara city when Nagoya Shiga started to live from 1925. I visited his house this weekend. It was typical but big Japanese house with traditional moss garden, tea room, salon,etc. I especially liked western style dining room with chairs and table. It was an elegant architecture mixed eastern and western culture.

 

Nara is old capital in 8th century and still remaining most of the building. A lot of deer welcome visitors from overseas. I realized again that his beautiful sentence in the novel was made by this wonderful environment.