The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

and a cot completed the furnishings. In front of the
eastern window was a steel electric pylon, its
porcelain insulators repeating the color of the clouds.
The power line ran down to the beach, where it was
caught by a second pylon. A turn to the northeast took
it to a third, and so around the coast, a diminishing
curve of silver towers, to Shimizu Harbor. The third
pylon was, from this vantage point, a good marker. A
ship came into the harbor, and one knew as it passed
the third pylon that it was approaching Basin 3-G,
which included the piers.
Even now identification was by naked eye. So long
as vagaries in cargoes and currents ruled the
movements of ships, they would continue to come in
too soon or too late, and a certain nineteenth-century
romanticism would not disappear from welcoming
parties. There was a need for more precise
observations to tell the customs and quarantine
officials and the stevedores and pilots and laundries
and provisioners when to put out their welcoming
flags. There was a still greater need for a just arbiter
to decide which was to take precedence when two
ships came in together and competed for the last
berth.
That was Tōru’s work.