Beauty and sadness (1st American ed.)

The successful writer Oki has reached middle age and is filled with regrets.

He returns to Kyoto to Otoko, a young woman with whom he had a terrible affair many years before, and discovers that she is now a painter, living with a younger woman as her lover.

Otoko has continues to love Oki and has never forgotten him, but his return unsettles not only her but also her young lover.

This is a work of strange beauty, with a tender touch of nostalgia and a heartbreaking sensitivity to those things lost forever.