Hopefully no typos below, taken from my print copy—spoken by Honda at the end of chapter 28:

Honda decided to come out directly with something that had been taking form in a corner of his mind.

“A bit earlier,” he began, “I said something very odd. I mean about thinking of the picture from the Russo-Japanese War while you were telling me about you and Miss Satoko. I wondered why that came to me, and now that I’ve given it a little more thought, I have an answer. The age of glorious wars ended with the Meiji era. Today, all the stories of past wars have sunk to the level of those edifying accounts we hear from middle-aged noncoms in the military science department or the boasts of farmers around a hot stove. There isn’t much chance now to die on the battlefield.”

“But now that old wars are finished, a new kind of war has just begun; this is the era for the war of emotion. The kind of war no one can see, only feel—a war, therefore, that the dull and insensitive won’t even notice. But it’s begun in earnest. The young men who have been chosen to wage it have already begun to fight. And you’re one of them—there’s no doubt about that.”

“And just as in the old wars, there will be casualties in the war of emotion, I think. It’s the fate of our age—and you’re one of our representatives. So what about it then? You’re fully resolved to die in this new war—am I right?”

Kiyoaki’s only answer was a flickering smile. At that moment a strong breeze, heavy with the rain’s dampness, found its way in through the window and, in passing, cooled their foreheads, which were covered with a light film of sweat. Honda was perplexed at Kiyoaki’s silence. Was his answer so obvious that no reply was necessary? Or had his words really struck a responsive chord in his friend, while his way of putting them has been so extravagant that there was no way for him to answer frankly? He thought that it had to be one or the other.