What’s the tone?

This short story by Toshio Mori was written in 1939, but it was not published until 1946. It concerns a young Japanese American man, still a "schoolboy" at the age of 31, who is passionately devoted to his dream of becoming a great Shakespearean actor.
The tone of the story is quietly melancholy, echoing the narrator's fear "that Tom's energy and time were wasted" and that he himself is contributing to the problem by encouraging his friend. Tom's hopes—"this was his special role, the role that would establish him in Shakespearean history"—are recorded with gentle irony, as the narrator implies that the hopes can never be realized.
The tone of increasing hopelessness and frustration escalates throughout the story until the narrator begins to "dread [Tom's] presence"; his concern for Tom is palpable. Eventually, Tom stops asking the narrator to listen to him recite. We are told almost in passing that the narrator encounters him later on a subway. The narrator knows he has not made a success of himself, but he is still reading Shakespeare. The narrator "could not forget his simple persistence."
Although the fact that Tom is Japanese is not mentioned outright in the story, the combination of his Japanese surname and the title give some indication that the story is concerned with the disjointedness between Tom's two identities: being Hamlet and being Japanese. He yearns to be a Shakespearean actor, but he feels—or, perhaps, the narrator feels—that the fact that he is Japanese holds him back. The story leaves the reader feeling unsettled. Tom is unable to properly settle into real life because he is so preoccupied with his unreachable dream.