Summary

The chapter opens with news of Matsuda’s death reaching Masuji Ono, and Masuji Ono recalls his last visit to Matsuda. Matsuda, in failing health himself, admits neither one of them had had a sufficiently wide vision at the time.

Masuji Ono says he had tried his utmost—and that he may have devoted himself to the wrong cause, in the end—but nevertheless he had given of himself, and lived to regret it. The regret itself, he says, is an experience, and has its value. While artists like Tortoise and Shintaro might plod away following other teachers’ examples, he himself is proud of having lived his life, even if that meant making the wrong decisions.

Masuji Ono says when he received the Shigeta Foundation Award in 1938, “the feeling of deep triumph and fulfillment which the award should have brought was curiously missing.” (p. 202). He...