conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first four paragraphs for a Epub book with the title 'The Sound of the Mountain'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Sound of the Mountain
  Consonants are pronounced approximately as in English, except that "g" is always hard, as in Gilbert. Vowels are pronounced as in Italian. Also as in Italian, the finale is always sounded. Thus the name Kaname is pronounced Kah-nah-meh. There is no heavy penultimate accent as in English; it is adequate to accent each syllable equally.
  Ogata Shingo, his brow slightly furrowed, his lips slightly parted, wore an air of thought. Perhaps to a stranger it would not have appeared so. It might have seemed rather that something had saddened him.
  Indeed, more was apparent to him than the simple fact that his father was thinking. He knew that his father was trying to remember something.
  Shingo took off his hat and, absently holding it in his right hand, set it on his knee. Shuichi put it on the rack above them.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Because of that voice, Shingo himself had forgiven Shuichi. And he thought that Kikuko had forgiven him. The selfishness of blood ties bore itself in on Shingo.
  He thought himself good to his daughter-in-law, and yet he seemed in some respects to side with his son.
  It was an ugly picture. Shuichi had drunk too much at the house of the woman in Tokyo, and come home to fall against the gate.
  If Shingo himself had gone to open the gate, he probably would have glared at Shuichi, and Shuichi would have sobered up. It was better that Kikuko had gone. Shuichi had thus been able to come in hanging on her shoulder.
  How many times would Kikuko, now in her early twenties, have to forgive Shuichi before she had lived with him to the ages of Shingo and Yasuko? Would there be no limit to her forgiving?
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Fusako looked down, and her mouth was working nervously. Then she gathered herself to bring out the words: "Father. Won't you open a little shop for me? A cosmetics shop, a stationery shop, anything. I don't care what part of town it's in. I don't mind if it's just a street stall. A drinking place."
  Shingo too got up, rubbing at a cramp in the small of his back. He looked absently into the living room and turned on the light.
  The game of Go is said to be an essential reflection of the Japanese spirit. And in this serenely measured yet suspenseful account of a match between a revered and heretofore invincible master of Go and his younger, more modern opponent, Yasunari Kawabata captures the moment in which the immutable traditions of imperial Japan meet the onslaught of the twentieth century.
  To this haunting novel of wasted love, Yasunari Kawabata brings the brushstroke suggestiveness and astonishing grasp of motive that have earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature. As he chronicles the affair between a wealthy dilettante and the mountain geisha who gives herself to him without illusions or regrets, one of Japan's greatest writers creates a work that is dense in implication and exalting in its sadness.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for the book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Sound of the Mountain
  Consonants are pronounced approximately as in English, except that "g" is always hard, as in Gilbert. Vowels are pronounced as in Italian. Also as in Italian, the final e is always sounded. Thus the name Kaname is pronounced Kah-nah-meh. There is no heavy penultimate accent as in English; it is adequate to accent each syllable equally.
  Ogata Shingo, his brow slightly furrowed, his lips slightly parted, wore an air of thought. Perhaps to a stranger it would not have appeared so. It might have seemed rather that something had saddened him.
  Indeed, more was apparent to him than the simple fact that his father was thinking. He knew that his father was trying to remember something.
  Shingo took off his hat and, absently holding it in his right hand, set it on his knee. Shuichi put it on the rack above them.
  Of provincial origins, Shingo was never very confident about standard Tokyo pronunciation. Shuichi had grown up in Tokyo.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me another paragraph.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: It seemed to Shingo quite proper that in postwar domestic law the basic unit had been changed from parent and child to husband and wife.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Widely regarded as Mishima's finest work. Forbidden Colors explores the issue of sexual hedonism in postwar Japan, An aging, embittered novelist employs the beautiful and young Yuichi Minami to avenge himself on the women who have betrayed him. As his mentor forces him into a loveless marriage and a string of meaningless love affairs, Yuichi looks for physical and emotional solace in Japan's vast gay underworld. As he works his way through the gay world's secret spaces. Yuichi meets with blackmailers, pimps and male prostitutes, soon finds himself as vulnerable and defenseless as the women he preyed on.
  One of Natsume Soseki's most admired works, And Then is a novel of love and disillusionment that tells the story of a young man for whom idleness has become an expression of rebellion. Having become thoroughly alienated by the cultural upheaval in Japan, Daisuke has lost the values to guide his life. Yet his refined indifference to everything is completely disrupted when he falls in love with his best friend's wife. Now for the first time. Daisuke must choose his own fate.
  Set in the turbulent Meiji era, a chance encounter on a Kamakura beach irrevocably links a young student to a man he simply calls "Sensei." Intrigued by Sensei's aloofness and wanting to know more about him, the student calls upon Sensei with increasing frequency. Eventually. Sensei and his beautiful wife open up their home and their lives to him. The young man graduates from university and is called home to his dying father, but the Sensei draws him back to Tokyo with a letter of heartfelt confession... Written in 1914. Kokoro provides a timeless psychological analysis of one man's alienation from society, and starkly but gently shows the depth of both friendship and love.
  The conflict between traditional and modern Japanese culture is at the heart of this novel. Kaname is a smug, modem man living in a modern marriage. He gamely allows his wife to become the lover of another man, an act that does not cure the profound sadness at the heart of their relationship. So Kaname gradually retreats into the protection of traditional rituals, attitudes and tastes, eventually making love to O-Hisa. his father-in-law's old-fashioned mistress, as he abandons the modern world entirely. The novel's other characters, including Kaname's wife, his lover, his father-in-law, and even the cities in which they live, all symbolize the modern and ancient ways of life in Japan. Tanizaki's characteristic irony, eroticism, and psychological undertones make Some Prefer Nettles an exceptional and compelling read.
  In The Key, a middle-aged husband and his wife both seek passion outside of their loveless marriage, telling their stories in the form of parallel diary entries. The novel carefully explores the theme of sexual desire, and Tanizaki's restrained and delicate prose artfully conveys not only the consequences of the couple's pursuits, but also demonstrates the very best of Japanese literature.