When Chokichi thought listlessly about this winter, and the similar winter before and the one before that, he vividly experienced the fact that as people grow older, they gradually lose their happiness.

Chokichi keenly felt that people, as they get older, forget entirely about the worries that only young people know about and that they themselves experienced in their youth; and that they nonchalantly take this convenient disposition where they judge harshly the circumstances of the young persons born of the next generation. He felt that there was truly an irreconcilable gap between the old and the young.