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example of the principal, General Nogi, who had committed suicide to follow his Emperor in death; and ever since they had started to emphasize the significance of his act, suggesting that their educational tradition would have been the poorer had the General died on a sickbed, an atmosphere of Spartan simplicity had come to permeate the school. Kiyoaki, who had an aversion to anything smacking of militarism, had come to loathe school for this reason.
    His only friend was his classmate Shigekuni Honda. There were of course many others who would have been delighted to be friends with Kiyoaki, but he didn’t like the youthful coarseness of his contemporaries; he shunned their rough, coltish ways and was further repelled by their crude sentimentality when they mindlessly roared out the school song. Kiyoaki was drawn only to Honda, with his quiet, composed, rational temperament, unusual in a boy of his age. Even so the two had little in common in appearance or temperament.
    Honda seemed older than he was. Though his features were quite ordinary, he tended to assume a somewhat pompous air. He was interested in studying law, and was gifted with keen intuition, but it was a power he tended to disguise. To look at him was to believe that he was indifferent to sensual pleasures, but there were times when he seemed fired by some deep passion; at these moments, Honda—who always kept his mouth firmly shut, as he kept his somewhat near-sighted eyes severely narrowed and his brows in a frown—was to be caught with a hint of parted lips in his expression.
    Kiyoaki and Honda were perhaps as different in their makeup as the flower and the leaf of a single plant. Kiyoaki was incapable of hiding his true nature, and he was defenseless against society’s power to inflict pain. His still unawakened sensuality lay dormant within him, unprotected as a puppy in a March rain, body shivering, eyes and nose pelted with water. Honda, on the other hand, had quite early in life grasped where danger lay, choosing to shelter from all storms, whatever their attraction.
    Despite this, however, they were remarkably close friends. Not content to see each other in school, they would also spend Sundays together at one or the other of their homes. And because the Matsugae estate had more to offer in the way of walks and other amusements, Honda usually came to Kiyoaki’s house.
    One October Sunday in 1912, the first year of the Taisho era, on an afternoon when the maple leaves were almost in their prime, Honda arrived in Kiyoaki’s room to suggest that they go boating on the pond. Had this been a year like any other, there would have been a growing number of visitors coming to admire the maple leaves, but as the Matsugaes had been in mourning since the Emperor’s death the previous summer, they had suspended normal social activities. An extraordinary stillness lay over the park.
    “Well, if you want to. The boat will take three. We’ll get Iinuma to row us.”
    “Why do we need anybody to row us? I’ll row,” said Honda, remembering the dour expression of the young man who had just needlessly escorted him with silent but relentless obsequiousness to Kiyoaki’s room.
    Kiyoaki smiled. “You don’t like him, do you, Honda?”
    “It’s not that I don’t like him. It’s just that, for all the time I’ve known him, I still can’t tell what’s going on inside his head.”
    “He’s been here six years, so I take him for granted now, like the air I breathe. We certainly don’t see eye to eye, but he’s devoted to me all the same. He’s loyal, he studies hard, you can depend on him.”
    Kiyoaki’s room was on the second floor facing the pond. It had originally been in Japanese style, but had been redecorated to look Western, with a carpet and Western furniture. Honda sat down on the windowsill. Looking over his shoulder, he took in the whole sweep of the pond, the island and the hill of maples beyond. The water lay smooth in the afternoon sun. Just