'Segaki is the story of two men, a woman, a dog, and a handful of snails. It is a very simple story. But like most simple stories, it is also a parable... It is the third volume of three novels concerned with various aspects of the religious experience... Segaki deals with [the] getting of wisdom, or insight, and deals with it, moreover, entirely in terms of Zen... Zen cannot be explained. It can only be embodied, and in that form, shown to people who will not see it unless they were accustomed to seeing it there anyway.' David Stacton, 1957

'I am enormously impressed by this... I haven't read such an electrifying work in ages. [Stacton] sounds not only like a magnificent poet but an initiate as well. And he seems to know Japan (the everlasting one) better than most Japanese...' Henry Miller (in a letter of October 1959)