A journalist acquires a certain coolness in the face of death. Deaths are news stories; in this column and in British newspapers, I have written obituaries of and tributes to the famous, measured descriptions of achievements and personal history. Meanwhile, the headlines report their daily, weekly or yearly quota of deaths: so many hundreds in Burma, so many thousands in Iraq. These numbers obscure individuality: The dead become subjects for analysis, not for grief. It takes a personal tragedy to restore a sense of gravity.

My friend Tristan Linforth died in a road accident last month in Tokyo. He was not quite 28, a year my junior. He died Sept. 19: my mother's birthday, a happy day for my family. From now on it will be marked by sadness.

Tristan died while on holiday, but I knew him because he had lived in Japan, where we were colleagues at a private language school. Richard Smart, an editor at this newspaper, then also a teacher, was a mutual friend, and the three of us used to meet after work to drink and set the world to rights. None of us enjoyed the job; our conversations were full of complaints, like those of Tokyo salarymen. Still, two years after we left that company, one of us was an editor, one a writer and Ph.D. student. And Tristan was working for Hansard, the journal of record for the British Parliament. We did pretty well for ourselves -- perhaps he most of all.

He will be missed. I will miss his wit, his warmth, his gentleness and generosity. I will remember, too, those less generic qualities: his particular glances, gestures and mannerisms, the tones of his voice especially (he spoke with an attractively wry Anglo-Scottish lilt). But a journalist has a duty to analyze -- to find meaning in events. In itself, Tristan's death was meaningless: an accident that could not have been predicted or averted. Yet I believe he would have wanted me to set it in some kind of context.

I was privileged to know him. Not only because he was a good and loyal friend, but also because we were privileged in a literal sense. As white, middle-class English-speaking young men from a prosperous country, we were free to travel and work abroad; we had the opportunity to take up residence in Japan almost on a whim, and we knew each other because of that opportunity, being beneficiaries of a situation that, even 50 years ago, was the preserve of a few very rich or very fortunate people.

So Tristan was very much a 21st century citizen of the world, at home in many places. As well as having lived in Japan, he had traveled widely. Even at home, he had moved -- born in England, raised in Scotland, resident in London when he died. Such cosmopolitan experience encourages discrimination. Tristan loved Japan, but that love was not unconditional. In a postcard to his parents during this last trip, he commented that all the old irritations were still there. That speaks for the small world we have made for ourselves, where it is easy to draw comparisons across continents and oceans.

But death makes the world suddenly large. Geographical distance becomes the distance between friends who, were they closer, could help and comfort each other. Tristan died far from his family and his girlfriend; some of his closest friends were unable to attend the funeral. In times of crisis and grief, our efficient, modern lifestyles are undermined.

At the same time, I wonder if there is some meaning to be found in the fact that Tristan died in a week when headlines were dominated by the violence in Burma. His political awareness was sharp, and I think he would have been the first to point out the gulf between the developed world, where premature death is a rending shock, and those poor or unstable nations when it is a fact of life. Tristan might have wanted us to remember the truth behind the violent headlines: The fact that those who have died in Burma, and in the world's other transient and ongoing conflicts, had their friends, relatives and lovers too -- people who are mourning them as we are mourning him.

Do these thoughts give a context to what has happened? Perhaps. But I am left with one irreducible fact, the death of an irreplaceable human being. A journalist must analyze and compare; a friend must grieve. This page is not the place for that private process. But my life from now on will be the poorer for the loss of Tristan's friendship, just as it is richer for the memories I have of him. I shall remember him as long as I live.

Alexander Jacoby is a British film critic and writer who lived in Japan from 2002 to 2005. He is currently writing a handbook of Japanese film directors and pursuing doctoral studies.