Japan Quotes

“The bones came jumbled together from the kitchen... there was no way of telling my parents from my Brothers and Sisters. I put them all in the same urn. Sometimes, late at night, I hold them in my hands and cry.”
― Jay Rubin, The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories

“Schools normally schedule one subject, for example, Japanese, the first period, when you just do Japanese; then, say, arithmetic the second period, when you just do arithmetic. But here it was quite different. At the beginning of the first period, the teacher made a list of all the problems and questions in the subjects to be studied that day. Then she would say, “Now, start with any of these you like.” […] This method of teaching enabled the teachers to observe - as the children progressed to higher grades - what they were interested in as well as their way of thinking and their character. It was an ideal way of teachers to really get to know their pupils.”
― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

“Time should not embarrass itself by moving forward, bringing only pale imitations of a perfect night.”
― Sherri L. Smith, The Blossom and the Firefly

“But it is on occasions like this that I always think how different everything would be if we in the Orient had developed our own science. Suppose for instance that we had developed our own physics and chemistry: would not the techniques and industries based on them have taken a different form, would not our myriads of everyday gadgets, our medicines, the products of our industrial art - would they not have suited our national temper better than they do?”
― Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows

“All translation is mistranslation. But maybe there should be a second part to that phrase. All conversation is misunderstanding. I think about the discrepancies that will always exist in the gaps between languages whenever I go anywhere outside Japan, anywhere where Japanese, my native language, isn’t spoken. But even when I use my native language, the same thing does apply. All language is misunderstanding. In degrees.”
― Hiromi Kawakami, Granta 127: Japan

“-L’umanità è concorde nella decisione di sopravvivere.- Non servono né liberazioni di colombe né bande militari. Basterebbe una frase simile per dare inizio a una fresca e tranquilla giornata, e l’universo intero saprebbe che da quell’istante la terra è divenuta una stella meravigliosa.”
― Yukio Mishima

“By historic custom only the descendants of the sprawling, ancient, semi-divine families of the Minowara, Takashima, and Fujimoto were entitled to the rank of Shogun.”
― James Clavell, Shogun

“No other animal in the world would try to defy the laws of nature, but humans are a very peculiar species.” – Nana.”
― Hiro Arikawa, The Travelling Cat Chronicles

“A complete back tattoo, stretching from the collar of the neck down to the tailbone can take one hundred hours. Such extensive tattooing, then, became a test of strength, and the gamblers eagerly adopted the practice to show the world their courage, toughness, and masculinity. It showed, at the same time, another, more humble purpose - as a self-inflicted wound that would permanently distinguish the outcasts from the rest of the world. The tattooing marks the yakuza as misfits, forever unable or unwilling to adapt themselves to Japanese society.”
― David E. Kaplan, Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld

“I want to conquer my own weak spirit and put the gas attack behind me.”
― Haruki Murakami, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

“No importa tanto la diferenciación entre el progreso representado por el ahorro de energía (que simplifica la vida cotidiana) o por la expansión de energía (que potencia nuestras aspiraciones o "aficiones" naturales), sino el acento puesto en la excesiva velocidad con que estas transformaciones han afectado al Japón, como consecuencia de la procedencia externa de los estímulos que, al no ser fruto de una secuencia generado intrínsecamente, ha obligado a una apresurada (y por ello superficial) asimilación de los cambios (muchos en muy poco tiempo), lo cual ha llegado a provocar una auténtica "angustia existencial.”
― Natsume Sōseki, My Individualism & The Philosophical Foundations of Literature

“With chopsticks, I cut through the dark-skinned egg, releasing molten yoke into waiting broth. Face bathed in the warming steam, I tasted.
Sheltered from the rain
Soothing train, ramen-numbed brain
I reap contentment
With the Zen meal consumed and consumed by the Zen meal, I exited back into the chaotic Tokyo night.”
― Gordon Vanstone, Rainy Day Ramen and the Cosmic Pachinko

“I had a rather unfortunate tendency to tell the truth in a country where no one ever says what they mean. So now, I very accurately translate other people's lies.”
― Edward Zwick

“Las conclusiones más significativas se refieren a la necesidad de que cada individuo se forme por sí mismo su propia opinión de la realidad sin aceptar acríticamente la autoridad de los maestros occidentales, el deber moral de usar los propios dones o bienes (inteligencia, poder, dinero) teniendo siempre presente una proyección social, la obligación de respetar la libertad de los demás al tiempo que se defiende la propia o la posibilidad de cohonestar la (prioritaria) autoexigencia personal con otros valores respetables como el servicio a la nación. Al final, el discurso se transforma, a partir de una advertencia a los jóvenes japoneses de 1914, en un alegato a favor de la independencia personal, de la libertad y de la tolerancia, es decir, en una afirmación de valores humanistas de significado universal.”
― Natsume Sōseki, My Individualism & The Philosophical Foundations of Literature

“Do you remember my friend Fumiko Kobayashi? She loaned me a book by a university professor named Taki Sugiyama Lebra, Japanese Patterns of Behaviour, and she writes that death, particularly voluntary death, is surrounded in this country by a heroic, romantic, aesthetic and emotional aura. She says we often find it hard to communicate and use suicide to make our ideas, or beliefs, or sufferings known. I don't know whether I believe that or not.”
― James Trager, Letters from Sachiko: A Japanese Woman's View of Life in the Land of the Economic Miracle

“Having the right brush does not mean you will make the right painting.”
― Catherine Meurisse, La jeune femme et la mer

“If it has not been invented in Japan, then it has not been invented anywhere else.”
― Amelia Danver, Bound to You in Japan

“A very successful method of dragon-fly-catching..is to use a captured female dragon-fly as a decoy. One end of a long thread is fastened to the insect's tail, and the other end of the thread to a flexible rod. By moving the rod in a particular way the female can be kept circling on her wings at the full length of the thread; and a male is soon attracted. As soon as he clings to the female, a slight jerk of the rod will bring both insects into the angler's hand. With a single female for lure, it is easy to capture eight or ten males in succession”
― Lafcadio Hearn, A Japanese Miscellany: Strange Stories, Folklore Gleanings, Studies Here & There

“A most extraordinary device for catching dragon-flies is used by the children of the province of Kii. They get a long hair, - a woman's hair, - and attach a very small pebble to each end of it, so as to form a miniature "bolas"; and this they sling high into the air. A dragon-fly pounces upon the passing object; but the moment that he seizes it, the hair twists round his body, and the weight of the pebbles brings him to the ground.”
― Lafcadio Hearn, A Japanese Miscellany: Strange Stories, Folklore Gleanings, Studies Here & There

“Japan is a wonderland of hidden gems awaiting your visit.”
― Takashi Sato, Japan: A Guidebook to Special Places

“What had happened to him and the others who faced a judged and said: "You can't make me go in the army because I'm not American, or you wouldn't have plucked me and mine from a life that was good and real and meaningful and fenced me in the desert like they do the Jews in Germany and it is a puzzle why you haven't started to liquidate us though you might as well since everything else has been destroyed."
And some said: "You, Mr. Judge, who supposedly represent justice, was it just a thing to ruin a hundred thousand lives and homes and farms and businesses and dreams and hopes because the hundred thousand were a hundred thousand Japanese when Japan is the country you're fighting and, if so, how about the Germans and Italians that must be just as questionable as the Japanese or we wouldn't be fighting Germany and Italy? Round them up. Take away their homes and cars and beer and spaguetti and throw them in a camp, and what do you think they'll say when you try to draft them into your army of the country that is for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?”
― John Okada, No-No Boy

“Japanese culture is thus a cannibalistic form - assimilating, absorbing, aping, devouring. Afro-Brazilian culture is also a rather good example of cannibalism in this sense: it too devours white modern culture, and it too is seductive in character. Cannibalism must indeed always be merely an extreme form of the relationship to the other, and this includes cannibalism in the relationship of love. Cannibalism is a radical form of hospitality.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena

“It's Friday afternoon and I'm alone. Rain drips from the eaves, a reminder that there is a world outside this room.”
― Heather Dixon, In the Shadows of Mountains

“I light a cigarette. Will I be judged for what I'm about to do?”
― Heather Dixon, In the Shadows of Mountains

“Of all the countries Fairchild had visited, Japan struck him as the most advanced on matters of horticulture. He learned about Japanese miniature gardens, the art of Japanese papermaking, and the superior qualities of Japanese fruits and vegetables that didn't grow anywhere else in the world. Wealthy people introduced him to foods of affluence, like raw fish, seaweed, and a bean cheese they called tofu. He thought it impossible to eat with two narrow sticks held in one hand, but after a few tries, he got the feel for it.
It was in Japan that Fairchild picked up a yellow plum known as a loquat and an asparagus-like vegetable called udo. And a so-called puckerless persimmon that turned sweet in sake wine casks. One of the most unrecognized discoveries of Fairchild, a man drawn to edible fruits and vegetables, was zoysia grass, a rich green lawn specimen attractive for the thickness of its blades and its slow growth, which meant it required infrequent cutting.
And then there was wasabi, a plant growing along streambeds in the mountains near Osaka. It had edible leaves, but wasabi's stronger quality was its bitter root's uncanny ability to burn one's nose. Wasabi only lasted in America until farmers realized that its close relative the horseradish root grew faster and larger and was more pungent than the delicate wasabi (which tends to stay pungent only fifteen minutes after it's cut). Small American farms still grow Fairchild's wasabi, but most of the accompaniment to modern sushi is in fact horseradish---mashed, colored, and called something it's not.”
― Daniel Stone, The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats

“Four years to the day after Fairchild's 1908 gift of the trees to Washington's schools, on March 27, 1912, Mrs. Taft broke dirt during the private ceremony in West Potomac Park near the banks of the Potomac River. The wife of the Japanese ambassador was invited to plant the second tree. Eliza Scidmore and David Fairchild took shovels not long after. The 3,020 trees were more than could fit around the tidal basin. Gardeners planted extras on the White House grounds, in Rock Creek Park, and near the corner of Seventeenth and B streets close to the new headquarters of the American Red Cross. It took only two springs for the trees to become universally adored, at least enough for the American government to feel the itch to reciprocate. No American tree could rival the delicate glamour of the sakura, but officials decided to offer Japan the next best thing, a shipment of flowering dogwoods, native to the United States, with bright white blooms.
Meanwhile, the cherry blossoms in Washington would endure over one hundred years, each tree replaced by clones and cuttings every quarter century to keep them spry. As the trees grew, so did a cottage industry around them: an elite group of gardeners, a team to manage their public relations, and weather-monitoring officials to forecast "peak bloom"---an occasion around which tourists would be encouraged to plan their visits. Eventually, cuttings from the original Washington, D.C, trees would also make their way to other American cities with hospitable climates. Denver, Colorado; Birmingham, Alabama; Saint Paul, Minnesota.”
― Daniel Stone, The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats

“Isabella Secret Story 6 What should your website contain

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If you already have a website, the first thing we advise you is to check the home page since it is undoubtedly one of the most important areas of a site.

Isabella Secret Story of Homepage - The home page is the gateway of a business to the virtual world, and, in many cases, it is where most of the traffic is generated.”
― Isabella Secret Story

“One of the reasons Japanese culture is so intriguing (and confounding) to westerners is not that it seems so foreign, but that it seems so familiar—at least at first. The packaging registers with our sensibilities, but the actual content does not. Innocent-looking anime characters sprout sudden porno appendages; morning chat shows digress into screaming fits; and musicians that dress like goth metalheads sound like fourth-tier Orlando boy-band members. Shinsaibashi has that same bewildering familiarity. Just as I convince myself that it’s another noisy mall, I’m nearly run down by a drunken bi- cyclist, and then accosted by a fuzzy store mascot.”
― Brian Raftery, Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life

“Once I have entered this land, all the beauty in the world becomes a part of my being. Without even touching a canvas, I become a first-class painter.”
― Catherine Meurisse, La jeune femme et la mer

“Funny... I'm looking at Nature, but I feel like she's looking at me instead.”
― Catherine Meurisse, La jeune femme et la mer