“How could he apologize?

He saw his escape in the Shino water jar. He knelt before it and looked at it appraisingly, as one looks at tea vessels.

A faint red floated up from the white glaze. Kikuji reached to touch the voluptuous and warmly cool surface.

‘Soft, like a dream. Even when you know as little as I do you can appreciate good Shino.’”

—Yasunari Kawabata, Thousand Cranes, translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker, 1959.