Japan Quotes

When you're in an extreme situation you tend to avoid facing it by getting caught up in little details. Like a guy who's decided to commit suicide and boards a train only to become obsessed with whether he remembered to lock the door when he left home.

~ Ryū Murakami

Life has a time limit. And we are changing all the time. So are our ambitions, desires, and purposes . . . The important thing is to find something that never changes in you.

~ Fumio Obata

Constant love despite almost impossible anti-clamix towards this place of the rising sun...

~ Alexander Zalan

Her eyes flashed, hot and angry, like lightening cutting through a red sunset.

~ Tyffani Clark Kemp

It seems like the best escape games come from Japan for some reason. It makes me proud.

~ Denis Markell

Minding his own business had been his motto living in a strange foreign country with a world-recognized social issue of failing morals.

~ Vann Chow

Daisuke was of course equipped with conversation that, even if they went further, would allow him to retreat as if nothing had happened. He had always wondered at the conversations recorded in Western novels, for to him they were too bald, too self indulgent, and moreover, too unsubtly rich. However they read in the original, he thought they reflected a taste that could not be translated into Japanese. Therefore, he had not the slightest intention of using imported phrases to develop his relationship with Michiyo. Between the two of them at least, ordinary words sufficed perfectly well. But the danger was of slipping from point A to point B without realizing it. Daisuke managed to stand his ground only by a hair's breadth. When he left, Michiyo saw him to the entranceway and said, Do come again, please? It's so lonely.

~ Sōseki Natsume

My Japanese isn’t much better today, but at least now I appreciate my duality more than when I was a punk kid.

~ Gil Asakawa

Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence.

~ Kakuzo Okahura

Life on earth survives thanks to diversity, says Sekunda, because changing circumstances means today's winners can suddenly become tomorrow's losers. When the meteor hits, when the Green Revolution fails, when the bees unexpectedly die, the kind of anomalous diversity found in the Galapagos Islands—or in the technology of Japan—is exactly what will save us from the most dangerous failure of all: global success.

~ Momus

Whereas, in the west, individuality and drive are considered positive qualities, they are not seen the same way, in Japan. In that country, if you are too much of a rugged individualist, it might actually indicate that you are a weak, unreliable character and that you are selfish, in a childish, willful kind of way.

~ Alexei Maxim Russell

Japan is the first nation in the world to accord 'comic books'--originally a 'humorous' form of entertainment mainly for young people--nearly the same social status as novels and films.

~ Frederik L. Schodt

Shigemori's body of work is a compelling manifesto for continuous cultural renewal.

~ Christian Tschumi

From New Year's Eve through the third of January, the streets of Tokyo grew quiet, as if all the people had disappeared.

~ Shogo Oketani

The physical impact of taiko music, along with the sheer visual poetry of a choreographed ensemble presenting its music in perfect synchrony, is so powerful and inviting that taiko is beginning to catch on as Japan's most influential and lasting gift to world music.

~ Gil Asakawa

Truly a good horse, good ground to gallop on, and sunshine, make up the sum of enjoyable travelling.

~ Isabella L. Bird

The secret to making yourself stronger is to absorb the strength of the people around you—energy begets energy.

~ Adachi Zenko

I’m very headstrong. Once I’ve caught fire, there’s no dousing the flames—all engines full speed ahead.

~ Adachi Zenko

Comics are drawings, not photographs, and as such they present a subjective view of reality.

~ Frederik L. Schodt

The new fans of Japan won’t be Orientalists, but they will be anime-savvy.

~ Morinosuke Kawaguchi

Japanese had never seen a Western-style circus, and most of them had probably never seen foreigners, either.

~ Frederik L. Schodt

In spite of what most assume, it is surprisingly tough to make the mind and body work together as a unit.

~ H.e. Davey

In Japanese swordsmanship, it is not uncommon to speak of a unity of mind, body, and sword.

~ H.e. Davey

He did not care about titles and was proud to be a farmer beyond all else.

~ Tsuneichi Miyamoto

Every once in a while she'll get worked up and cry like that. But that's ok. She's letting her feelings out. The scary thing is not being able to do that. Then your feelings build up and harden and die inside. That's when you're in big trouble.

~ Haruki Murakami

If God's love encompasses the whole world and if everyone who does not believe in him will perish, then surely this question needs to be asked: When, after two thousand years, does God's plan kick in for the billion people he 'so loves' in China? Or for the 840 million in India? Or the millions in Japan, Afghanistan, Siberia, Egypt, Burma ·.. and on and on?Why would a God who 'so loved the world' reveal his message only to a tiny minority of the people on earth, leaving the majority in ignorance? Is it possible to believe that the Father of all Mankind would select as his Chosen People a small Middle Eastern nation, Israel, reveal His will exclusively to them, fight alongside them in their battles to survive, and only after their failure to reach out to any other group, update His plan for the world's salvation by sending His 'only begotten son,' not to the world but, once again, exclusively to Israel?

~ Charles Templeton

...I was not prepared for the feel of the noodles in my mouth, or the purity of the taste. I had been in Japan for almost a month, but I had never experiences anything like this. The noodles quivered as if they were alive, and leapt into my mouth where they vibrated as if playing inaudible music.

~ Ruth Reichl

Dinner that night is a feast of flavor. To celebrate the successful exorcism, Kagura has cooked several more dishes than the shrine's usual, simple fare- fragrant onigiri, balls of rice soaked in green tea, with umeboshi- salty and pickled plums- as filling. There is eggplant simmered in clear soup, green beans in sesame sause, and burdock in sweet-and-sour dressing. The mood is festive.

~ Rin Chupeco

Peasants are people without sense or forethought. Therefore, they must not give rice to their wives and children at harvest time, but must save food for the future. They should eat millet, vegetables, and other coarse food instead of rice. Even the fallen leaves of plants should be saved as food against famine.

~ Keian No Ofuregaki

Integrating the beauty of seasonal change into the residence was a concept that remains true even today even in the more cramped, inner city machiya.

~ Judith Clancy

[Donald] Keene observed [in a book entitled The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, 1988] that the Japanese sense of beauty has long sharply differed from its Western counterpart: it has been dominated by a love of irregularity rather than symmetry, the impermanent rather than the eternal and the simple rather than the ornate. The reason owes nothing to climate or genetics, added Keene, but is the result of the actions of writers, painters and theorists, who had actively shaped the sense of beauty of their nation.Contrary to the Romantic belief that we each settle naturally on a fitting idea of beauty, it seems that our visual and emotional faculties in fact need constant external guidance to help them decide what they should take note of and appreciate. 'Culture' is the word we have assigned to the force that assists us in identifying which of our many sensations we should focus on and apportion value to.

~ Alain De Botton

[Soetsu Yanagi's] main criticism of individual craftsmen and modern artists is that they are overproud of their individualism. I think I am right in saying Yanagi's belief was that the good artist of craftsman has no personal pride because in his soul he knows that any prowess he shows is evidence of that Other Power. Therefore what Yanagi says is 'Take heed of the humble, be what you are by birthright, there is no room for arrogance'.

~ Bernard Leach

Count Ayakura’s abstraction persisted. He believed that only a vulgar mentality was willing to acknowledge the possibility of catastrophe. He felt that taking naps was much more beneficial than confronting catastrophes. However precipitous the future might seem, he learned from the game of kemari that the ball must always come down. There was no call for consternation. Grief and rage, along with other outbursts of passion, were mistakes easily committed by a mind lacking in refinement. And the Count was certainly not a man who lacked refinement.Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura’s version of political theory.

~ Yukio Mishima

Everything is an echo of something I once read.Dream, hope, and celebrate life!Love always comes back in a song.One thing we all have in common is a love for food and drink.Memories never die, and dreams never end!What is time?

~ John Siwicki

Allowing Islamic Sharia law into the constitutions of the U.S-created Islamic (!) Republic of Afghanistan and Republic of Iraq in 2004 and 2005 was as foolhardy as it would have been to write emperor-worship and Shinto militarism into Japan's 1946 constitution.

~ Robert Spencer

Cultures that do not wish to exist cannot be dissuaded from destroying themselves.

~ David P. Goldman

Kids with roofs and hot food have better things to do than play survival of the thuggiest.

~ Ryan Graudin

Cassiopeia? She was a queen long ago, in a different part of the world. The stories say she was very beautiful, but very proud. Too proud. She smack-talked some goddesses and got herself stuck up there for all eternity.

~ Ryan Graudin

A historic transition is occurring, barely noticed. Slowly, quietly, imperceptibly, religion is shriveling in America, as it has done in Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and other advanced societies. Supernatural faith increasingly belongs to the Third World. The First World is entering the long-predicted Secular Age, when science and knowledge dominate. The change promises to be another shift of civilization, like past departures of the era of kings, the time of slavery, the Agricultural Age, the epoch of colonialism, and the like. Such cultural transformations are partly invisible to contemporary people, but become obvious in retrospect.

~ James A. Haught

Young Bride had a scratch on her neck from the knife, but no other external injuries. It seemed she was killed by the shock the drunks gave her.After sixty-odd years, reliving the trauma of that fateful night was too much to bear.There was no funeral procession. She was buried on the unlucky hill on the outskirts of the village.The crickets, however, remained around her shack and continued to sing until the first snow fell.

~ Susumu Katsumata