The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

end of economic growth or with a Communist
government.
While perfectly aware of these facts, Honda
remained faithful to the old illusion. He took life
insurance, and became an almost foolish defender of
a currency system that was day by day falling to
pieces. Perhaps a distant mirage of the age of the
gold standard, when Isao was living so passionately,
remained with Honda.
It had been long ago that the beautiful dream of
harmony so dear to the liberal economists had faded,
and the dialectical inevitability of the Marxists too had
come to look rather peculiar. What was supposed to
die had increased and multiplied, what was supposed
to grow (it did grow, of course) changed into
something quite different. There was no room left for
pure doctrine.
It was simple to believe in a world headed for
destruction, and had he still been twenty Honda
himself would perhaps have so believed; and the very
refusal to collapse kept the person who had to slip
over life like a skater and presently die constantly on
the alert. Who would be so foolish as to skate if he
knew the ice was cracking? And if the ice was quite
certain not to crack, then a person was denied the
pleasure of seeing others fall in. The only question