We Japanese are at home in crowded places. We conceive our children while lying together 
only yards away from our parents, separated by walls made of paper, in houses where we 
can reach outside the windows and touch our neighbor's front door. We ride in trains and 
elevators so full of people that the railroad companies and department stores hire 
white-gloved attendants whose only role is to push the last of us fully inside so the 
doors might close. While riding in those railroad cars and elevators, we breathe one 
another's air and feel one another's sweat, and can even stare into one another's faces 
and never once really look into each other's eyes. It takes great concentration, but if 
everyone cooperates it's as if each of us had that elevator or that railway car entirely 
to ourselves. We can create stillness and solitude even where there is none.