It is a monstrous act of violence to begin something.

- Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Letter from the Young Worker” in Letters to A Young Poet

Balestrand, Norway, 1962.

“The more I wrote, the more I realized mere words were not enough. So I found another form of expression.”

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Paul Schrader, 1985)

Photo from the general public bath used by Yakuza (1947).

Jupiter and the Moons

Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness. Everything passes. That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell. Everything passes.
— Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

It continued: darkness, then light; light, then darkness. I finished the wine and went out for more. I came back, undressed, got back in bed. The arrival and departure of the faces continued; I felt I was having a vision. I was being visited by hundreds of devils that the Devil Himself couldn't tolerate.
I drank more wine.

“Stop! Here lies the empire of death.”
Paris Catacombs.

Nighttime in Argentina

I have always shook with fright before human beings. Unable as I was to feel the least particle of confidence in my ability to speak and act like a human being, I kept my solitary agonies locked in my breast. I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed. I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric.

— Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

Adolf Kaufmann - Mediterranean Landscape with Ancient Temple.