I originally started this blog because I was dissatisfied with the features at LJ: I was tired of not having access to statistics, and of the insularity of Livejournal in general. In general, in terms of features, this blog more than meets my expectations. I have all of the features I desire. Unfortunately, everyone I know still mostly uses LJ or a clone, so I miss blogging as conversation. So, I think if I update more frequently, I’ll get more hits.

So my new plan is to start importing old content from my livejournal, namely my old book blogs. Since most people didn’t really comment on them, not much is lost by only importing the body of the review, and not the comments. I need to go seek out a blogosphere, really; actually, all the hype about strikethrough or fans leaving in a huff aside, LJ really is losing traffic, probably because of Myspace et al, so I am kind of wondering about the future of the English-speaking portion of the site.

Finished reading this book, Kawabata’s last, and I think my primary reaction is to recommend one of his others. Not that this book wasn’t, as usual, beautifully written (well, as much as one can assert such a thing when reading the translation: the descriptions of the works of art, of the paintings and novels, are excellet), but the story was rather unsatisfyingly enigmatic. The story is such: a novelist in his fifties, a married man with a son and a daughter, on a whim, decides to visit his former mistress in Kyoto, who has since become a famed painter. The novelist started his affair with her when she was fifteen and he about thirty, and during their affair she became pregnant, but the baby was stillborn, after which they parted, and he wrote a famed novel about their relationship, which ironically became the basis of the prosperity of his family. His meeting with his former lover is anticlimactic. She takes a philosophical view of the circumstances, even though she has decided since then never to marry; her protegee (and lover) Keiko, an abstract painter, becomes obsessed with the thought of avenging her teacher, despite her teacher’s pleas to give up such an idea. Although some readers found Keiko fascinating, I think I was more irritated by her shocking statements and insane plans; perhaps this is because she vaguely reminded me of one of the sadistic fatal women in Tanizaki’s works, but less blindingly perverse. The novel is quite short, and the ending very sudden, and slightly unexpectedly so.