A Wounded Tiger Is A Dangerous Beast.

I Don't Know When We'll See Each Other Again Or What The World Will Be Like When We Do. We May Both Have Seen Many Horrible Things. But I Will Think Of You Every Time I Need To Be Reminded That There Is Beauty And Goodness In The World.

For A Flicker Of A Moment I Imagined A World Completely Different From The One I'd Always Known, A World In Which I Was Treated With Fairness, Even Kindness-- A World In Which Fathers Didn't Sell Their Daughters.

Yet Somehow The Thing That Startled Me Most, After A Week Or Two Had Passed, Was That I Had In Fact Survived.

Now I Know That Our World Is No More Permanent Than A Wave Rising On The Ocean. Whatever Our Struggles And Triumphs, However We May Suffer Them, All Too Soon They Bleed Into A Wash, Just Like Watery Ink On Paper.

As An American Man Of The 1990s Writing About A Japanese Woman Of The 1930s, I Needed To Cross Three Cultural Divides - Man To Woman, American To Japanese, And Present To Past.