The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

3
THE CONCRETE PLATFORM was a water tank.
Water was pumped into it from a well and stored for
irrigating strawberries. Teikoku Signal had seen the
possibilities of the high platform and put up a wooden
shelter. It was ideal for sighting ships from Nagoya to
the west or Yokohama to the east.
Normally four signalmen worked eight-hour shifts.
One of them had long been ill, however, and the other
three took turns at twenty-four-hour duty. The first floor
was the office of the superintendent, who from time to
time came from the downtown office. The three
signalmen had only a bare-floored room, some four
yards square and surrounded on three sides by
windows, on the second floor.
Attached to one window was a desk with a view on
the three sides. Facing south was a thirty-power
telescope, facing the harbor facilities to the east were
fifteen-power binoculars, and at the southeast corner,
for night signals, was a one-kilowatt beam. Two
telephones on the desk at the southwest corner, a
book shelf, maps, signal flags arranged on high
shelves, and to the northwest a kitchen with a closet