Best 605 quotes in «japan quotes» category

Seek to become conscious of being filled with ki, the power of the universe, and to use that power well. To be at one with this great power is aikido, the way of the spirit. (Page 17).

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

Shinju in Japanese literally means "inside the heart." More fully, it implies that if the heart were cut open, there would be found only devotion to one's lover; thus, "revealing-the-heart death.

Since the 1970s, Japanese quality has become a byword, and many a book and article has been penned on the subject of Kaizen, ‘improvement,’ a form of corporate culture in which employers encourage their workers to submit ideas that will polish and improve efficiency. The writers on Kaizen, however, overlooked one weakness in this approach, which seemed minor at the time but has seriously impacted Japan’s technology. Kaizen’s emphasis is entirely on positive recommendations; there is no mechanism to deal with negative criticism, no way to disclose faults or mistakes—and this leads to a fundamental problem of information. People keep silent about embarrassing errors, with the result that problems are never solved.

[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'.

So it is that in our world hopes are thwarted at every turn and the people's lot is always pain.

Some nonreligious people are disgruntled by the word "faith," feeling that it has no connection to them. But we all have faith. Broadly speaking, "faith" does not apply only to belief in the supernatural. We have faith in our life, for example, believing we will live to see tomorrow, or in our health, believing we have years of healthy life ahead of us. Husbands and wives, parents and children have faith in one another.

Soused se vrátil k prázdné stodole a napsal na zeď: "Kdyby jen nebyly jaderné elektrárny! Chci umřít." Pak se oběsil na stropním trámu. Otrávili nás! Okradli nás! Podvedli nás! Můj dům měl sto šedesát mikrosievertů! Moje záclony měly sedmdesát mikrosievertů! Moje postel měla padesát mikrosievertů! Moje zahrada měla sto osmdesát mikrosievertů!

Sometimes just to touch the ground is enough for me, even if not a single thing grows from what I plant.

Still he considered playing Pachinko the best investment of his free time, soaking in the local stench and bad breathe of other lonely Japanese people as an alternative way of blending into the colorful local scenes which he yearned to be a part of.

Tell me, Satoru. What's out there beyond this field? A lot of wonderful things, I'm thinking. I wonder if I'll be able to go on a trip with you again. Satoru grins, and picks me up, so I can see the far-off-horizon from his eye level. Ah - we saw so many things, didn't we?

Take a small notebook and carry it with you all the time. If you have any communication problems. Just write the word in English and show it to the person.

The better you were able to imagine what you wanted to imagine, the farther you could flee from reality.

The Game of Go was one of the 4 Arts of China. It spread to all over Asia and was even mentioned in the Japanese novel, Tales of Genji. More than an ancient board game, the Game of Go is an analogy of life and emphasize balance, challenge, and fun. Not only does my name Kailin Gow has the word "Go" in it, but my philosophy on life of balance, challenge, and fun is similar to the Game. Thus, Kailin Gow's Go Girl TV Series, books, and overall brand reflects this philosophy as well. - Kailin Gow in interview about Kailin Gow's Go Girl Books and TV Series.

The blue of the sky is one of the most special colors in the world, because the color is deep but see-through both at the same time.

The entrenched interests of the regional nobility prevented the proper functioning of a government built upon ethical practice. While high-minded scholars often called for reforms, their memoranda carried little weight with an idle aristocracy.

The censors were so far gone as to find the following sentence obscene: 'The factory gate waited for the student workers, thrown open in longing.' What can I say? This obscenity verdict was handed down by a censor in response to my script for my 1944 film about a girls' volunteer corps, Ichiban utsukushiku (The Most Beautiful). I could not fathom what it was he found to be obscene about this sentence. Probably none of you can either. But for the mentally disturbed censor this sentence was unquestionably obscene. He explained that the word 'gate' very vividly suggested to him the vagina! For these people suffering from sexual manias, anything and everything made them feel carnal desire. Because they were obscene themselves, everything seen through their obscene eyes naturally became obscene. Nothing more or less than a case of sexual pathology.

The face of self-pity was universally understood.

The Japanese have two words: "uchi" meaning inside and "soto" meaning outside. Uchi refers to their close friends, the people in their inner circle. Soto refers to anyone who is outside that circle. And how they relate and communicate to the two are drastically different. To the soto, they are still polite and they might be outgoing, on the surface, but they will keep them far away, until they are considered considerate and trustworthy enough to slip their way into the uchi category. Once you are uchi, the Japanese version of friendship is entire universes beyond the average American friendship! Uchi friends are for life. Uchi friends represent a sacred duty. A Japanese friend, who has become an uchi friend, is the one who will come to your aid, in your time of need, when all your western "friends" have turned their back and walked away.

[The] Japanese were a people in a profound, inverse, reverse, or if I preferred it, even perverse sense, more in love with death than living.

The green sponge turned out to be fu (wheat gluten), a high-protein Buddhist staple food often flavored with herbs and spices. The pink-and-yellow cigarette lighters turned out to be yogurts. The lime-green yo-yos were rice taffy cakes bulging with sweet white bean paste. As for the vermilion-colored mollusks, they were a kind of cockle called blood clams (or arc shell) and, according to Tomiko, "delicious as sushi." The jumbo green sprouts came from the daikon radishes and were "tasty in salads." And the pebbly-skinned yellow fruit was yuzu, an aromatic citrus with a lemony pine flavor that was "wonderful in soup.

The highest goal is not distinctions, but synthesis and harmony.

The origin of the term kamikakushi, “spirited away” is said to be unknown, but in the end, it’s all about the same thing. Killing children in times of famine.

[The official prosecutors] ... were more vengeful on behalf of our injuries than I myself could ever be.

The only difference between having an affair here and having an affair there was that the American men would always ended up losing half of his estates over a woman he was infatuated just as much as the next tramp who would come his way, while Japanese men would only earn more respect from their subordinates through the possession of much younger women, as a sign of prowess and affluence, while their wives at home, as if there were rule books distributed nationally on the “proper” marriage etiquette for all young Japanese women to read before they enter into the matrimony, would turn a blind eye on their disloyalty quietly.

The peasant is the foundation of the state and must be governed with care. He must be allowed neither too much, nor too little, but just enough rice to live on and keep for seed in the following year. The remainder must be taken from him in tax.

The peace within and flowing from sacred spaces and architecture places is clothed in forgiveness, renunciation, and reconciliation.

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.

The Professor noted two nymphs with strawberries on their heads, a DayGlo Amish lady, a mustachioed man in a rainbow apron. He wrote Saturday Night Fever, then crossed it out and wrote Drag Ball + Bollywood and underlined it twice.

The real game, as I soon discover, is donburi. Donburi, often shortened to don, means "bowl," and the name encapsulates a vast array of rice bowls topped with delicious stuff: oyakodon (chicken and egg), unadon (grilled eel), tendon (tempura). As nice as meat and tempura and eel can be, the donburi of yours and mine and every sensible person's dreams is topped with a rainbow bounty of raw fish. Warm rice, cool fish, a dab of wasabi, a splash of soy- sushi, without the pageantry and without the price tag. At Kikuyo Shokudo Honten you will find more than three dozen varieties of seafood dons, including a kaleidoscopic combination of uni, salmon, ikura (salmon roe), quail eggs, and avocado. I opt for what I've come to call the Hokkaido Superhero's Special: scallops, salmon roe, hairy crab, and uni. It's ridiculous hyperbole to call a simple plate of food life changing, but as the tiny briny eggs pop and the sweet scallops dissolve and the uni melts like ocean Velveeta, I feel some tectonic shift taking place just below my surface.

There is no geometry here; or rather there is a secret, infinitely non-Eucledian and subtle geometry, a secret harmony that the mind seizes before the intelligence.

There are so many other fun ways to dishonor the family name that buying girls’ underwear shouldn’t be one of them.

There is one thing I can say for certain: the older a person gets, the lonelier he becomes. It's true for everyone. But maybe that isn't wrong. What I mean is, in a sense our lives are nothing more than a series of stages to help us get used to loneliness. That being the case, there's no reason to complain. And besides who would be complaint to anyway? (A Walk To Kobe, Granta 124: Travel)

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

There was also a peculiarly Japanese adaptation of things foreign. I first noticed this one rainy November evening when I stopped by Rub-a-Dub, a funky reggae watering hole located near the Pontocho, the city's former red-light district now known for its restaurants, bars, and geisha teahouses. After ordering one of the bar's famous daiquiris, I anticipated receiving an American-style rum-in-your-face daiquiri with an explosive citrus pucker. Instead, I was handed a delicate fruity drink that tasted more like a melted lime Popsicle. Over time I noticed other items had been similarly adapted. McDonald's offered hamburgers with sliced pineapple and ham to satisfy Japanese women's notorious sweet tooth. "Authentic" Italian restaurants topped their tomato-seafood linguini with thin strands of nori seaweed, instead of grated Parmesan. And slim triangles of "real" New York-style chizu-keki (cheesu-cakey) in dessert shops tasted like cream cheese-sweetened air.

There was reason to believe the battle for Iwo Jima would be even more ferocious than the others, reason to expect the Japanese defender would fight even more tenaciously. In Japanese eyes the Sulfur Island was infinitely more precious than Tarawa, Guam, Tinian, Saipan, and the others. To the Japanese, Iwo Jima represented something more elemental: It was Japanese homeland. Sacred ground. In Shinto tradition, the island was part of the creation that burst forth from Mount Fuji at the dawn of history.... the island was part of a seamless sacred realm that had not been desecrated by an invader's foot for four thousand years. Easy Company and the other Marines would be attempting nothing less than the invasion of Japan.

These ideas fit the experience of these Japanese women who often talked about searching for or trying to develop "self" (jibun). Cultivating or polishing self by doing tea ceremony or being a good mother, for example, had a good connotation for the Japanese because it meant that you were trying to go beyond your narrow self and connect self with the larger world beyond social norms. But developing self in the new way these women used it meant to develop self according to just what you want to do or in a way that enhances your own possibilities in the world. Would others see choosing a life for self as selfish? These women had to maintain some ambiguity because they were wandering into dangerous territory when they wanted to travel just to enjoy themselves, or keep working and not marry. In a society that honored the cultivation of a larger self, would they themselves someday suffer for having chosen the self-centered way?

The West in the voice of her thundering cannon had said at the door of Japan, Let there be a nation—and there was a Nation. And now that it has come into existence, why do you not feel in your heart of hearts a pure feeling of gladness and say that it is good? Why is it that I saw in an English paper an expression of bitterness at Japan's boasting of her superiority of civilization—the thing that the British, along with other nations, has been carrying on for ages without blushing? Because the idealism of selfishness must keep itself drunk with a continual dose of self-laudation. But the same vices which seem so natural and innocuous in its own life make it surprised and angry at their unpleasantness when seen in other nations.

Things changing, failing apart, fading, another year, a few more moves, a hard person who doesn't give a fuck, a boredom so monumental it humbles, arrangements so fleeting made by people you don't even know that it requires you to lose any sense of reality you might have once acquired, expectations so unreasonable you become superstitious about ever matching them.

They have taken the idea of nonharming, of gentleness toward the earth, to a very radical level. Even the weeds are not enemies.

The wind blew stronger. Masakichi had to walk into its resistance, but his pace did not slow. The further he went, the faster he moved, soundlessly and forcefully. The earth smelled like rain. He had to find a way out. Alive. His grandfather Jinzaemon had taught him how to find a straight path, even in the wind. Jinzaemon was born in 1848, twenty years before Japan first opened its doors to the West. He had taught Masakichi all about ninjutsu. “If you want to go straight against the wind, find a path in its folds and pass through it,” he had said, al- though he’d never actually taught his grandson how to find it. Still, Masakichi had begged him. “Even if I teach you where the path is, you won’t be able to see it because the wind is always changing. If I show you the path in the wind one minute, the wind will shift and the path will disappear the next.” “Then how do I find it?” Masakichi had asked, worried he’d never be able to do it. “You must find it anew each time,” his grandfather smiled. “The only way to see the path in the wind is to become the wind itself.

They say, you cannot stop the birds of sorrow, but you can prevent them from building a nest in your hair.

To gain mastery you must unite the qualities of spirit, strength, technique and the ability to take the initiative. (Page 31).

This private estate was far enough away from the explosion so that its bamboos, pines, laurel, and maples were still alive, and the green place invited refugees—partly because they believed that if the Americans came back, they would bomb only buildings; partly because the foliage seemed a center of coolness and life, and the estate’s exquisitely precise rock gardens, with their quiet pools and arching bridges, were very Japanese, normal, secure; and also partly (according to some who were there) because of an irresistible, atavistic urge to hide under leaves.

This may seem labouring the obvious, but in Japan one meets intelligent people who claim that ‘logic’ is something invented in the West to allow Westerners to win discussions. Indeed, the belief is widespread that the Japanese can as happily do without logic now as they supposedly have for centuries past.

To appreciate the best opportunity for attack and defence, you must fully understand the rhythm of movement. (Page 28).

Tokyo is bigger than Kumamoto. And Japan is bigger than Tokyo. And even bigger than Japan... Even bigger than Japan is the inside of your head. Don't ever surrender yourself ― not to Japan, not to anything. You may think that what you're doing is for the sake of the nation, but let something take possession of you like that, and all you do is bring it down.

Too lazy to be ambitious, I let the world take care of itself. Ten days' worth of rice in my bag; a bundle of twigs by the fireplace. Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment? Listening to the night rain on my roof, I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.

True, there's an aisle devoted to foreign foods, and then there are familiar foods that have been through the Japanese filter and emerged a little bit mutated. Take breakfast cereal. You'll find familiar American brands such as Kellogg's, but often without English words anywhere on the box. One of the most popular Kellogg's cereals in Japan is Brown Rice Flakes. They're quite good, and the back-of-the-box recipes include cold tofu salad and the savory pancake okonomiyaki, each topped with a flurry of crispy rice flakes. Iris and I got mildly addicted to a Japanese brand of dark chocolate cornflakes, the only chocolate cereal I've ever eaten that actually tastes like chocolate. (Believe me, I've tried them all.) Stocking my pantry at Life Supermarket was fantastically simple and inexpensive. I bought soy sauce, mirin, rice vinegar, rice, salt, and sugar. (I was standing right in front of the salt when I asked where to find it This happens to me every time I ask for help finding any item in any store.) Total outlay: about $15, and most of that was for the rice. Japan is an unabashed rice protectionist, levying prohibitive tariffs on imported rice. As a result, supermarket rice is domestic, high quality, and very expensive. There were many brands of white rice to choose from, the sacks advertising different growing regions and rice varieties. (I did the restaurant wine list thing and chose the second least expensive.) Japanese consumers love to hear about the regional origins of their foods. I almost never saw ingredients advertised as coming from a particular farm, like you'd see in a farm-to-table restaurant in the U.S., but if the milk is from Hokkaido, the rice from Niigata, and the tea from Uji, all is well. I suppose this is not so different from Idaho potatoes and Florida orange juice. When I got home, I opened the salt and sugar and spooned some into small bowls near the stove. The next day I learned that Japanese salt and sugar are hygroscopic: their crystalline structure draws in water from the air (and Tokyo, in summer, has enough water in the air to supply the world's car washes). I figured this was harmless and went on licking slightly moist salt and sugar off my fingers every time I cooked.

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