Five swivel chairs were ranged along the other side of the observation car of the Kyoto express. Oki Toshio noticed that the one on the end was quietly revolving with the movement of the train. He could not take his eyes from it. The low armchairs on his side of the car did not swivel.
Oki was alone in the observation car. Slouched deep in his armchair, he watched the end chair turn. Not that it kept turning in the same direction, at the same speed; sometimes it went a little faster, or a little slower, or even stopped and began turning in the opposite direction. To look at that one revolving chair, wheeling before him in the empty car, made him feel lonely. Thoughts of the past began flickering through his mind.
...
The loud chattering in a foreign language made Oki feel all the more lonely. That revolving chair in the observation car, turning by itself, came before him. It was as he saw his own loneliness silently turning round and round within his heart.
Beauty and Sadness, Yasunari Kawabata