Japanese Culture Quotes

“In the trembling grey of a spring dawn, when the birds were whispering in mysterious cadence among the trees, have you not felt that they were talking to their mates about the flowers?”
― Kakuzō Okakura, The Book of Tea

“I don’t know how I’ll feel about anything when my memories return.” His arms tightened around her. “But I know I fear losing you more than anything that might befall me.”
― Annette Marie, Dark Tempest

“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

“He would show up not with women but with two or three newspaper or magazine reporters. According to some of these fellows, now that the military had fallen, the impoverished poets and artists were going to be the new public heroes.”
― Osamu Dazai, ヴィヨンの妻 [Viyon No Tsuma]

“You can't possibly think you can date a member of the working class."
"Sachiko is marrying a commoner."
"Sachiko is marrying an heir to a rice empire related to the Takamoris. Ryu can support the life she is accustomed to. Takai, takai, takai." The three words are a well-known cliché, playing off the meanings. Good income, good school, and tall. Ideal characteristics for potential male love interests.”
― Emiko Jean, Tokyo Ever After

“In attesa della venuta di un universo di felicità assoluta e uniti da un unico interesse maledetto, sognavano un semplice assioma. Sognavano il giorno in cui quello dell'amore di un uomo per un altro uomo avrebbe capovolto il vecchio assioma dell'amore di un uomo per una donna.”
― Yukio Mishima, Forbidden Colors

“You don’t have to sleep if you don’t want to.” - Masao”
― Hidemi Woods, An Old Tree in Kyoto: How a Japanese girl got freedom

“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

“Across the river, bathed in light, the samurai smiled "I've finally found you.”
― Julie Kagawa, Night of the Dragon

“C'è anche chi dice: «Il tè è la bellezza formale della vita di un tempo». «E' il culmine delle arti giapponesi», pensano altri. Qualcuno, poi, ha scritto: «E' la religione della bellezza, nella quale si mira al vuoto attraverso la tenace pratica dell'otemae». «Un concentrato di saggezza esistenziale, incentrata sulle stagioni». «Uno stile zen»... Il tè ammette qualsiasi interpretazione. E allora anche alla mia visione corrisponde un mondo del tè. Forse il tè è un riflesso di ciascuno: ci sono tanti tè quante persone.”
― Noriko Morishita, Every Day a Good Day: Fifteen lessons I learned about happiness from Japanese tea culture

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

“Al tempio c'è una poesia intitolata "la mancanza", incisa nella pietra. Ci sono 3 parole, ma il poeta le ha cancellate. Non si può leggere la mancanza, solo avvertirla.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“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

“Instead of pressuring the Japanese into lowering trade barriers or taking a greater share of the responsibility for their own defense, we should be urging them to bring their verbs from the ends of their sentences into second place, right after their subjects, where they belong.”
― Jay Rubin, Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell You

“There was always an unspoken expectation that I would return one day and follow in my father's footsteps as an imperial guard. My mother grew ill, forcing my father into early retirement. I did my duty."
"That seems unfair."
He huffs out a breath. "It feels unfair. But my parents were older when they had me. You know, the last remnants of a postwar generation, brought up to value sacrifice, discipline, and duty."
"Whoa. Gimu. Peak Japanese." Japanese language is subtly nuanced. There is a myriad of words to describe duty, and among them is the gimu----a lifelong obligation to family or country.”
― Emiko Jean, Tokyo Ever After

“You know of gimu. But have you studied ninjō?"
It's hard to think the way he's looking at me. I rack my brain. "Ninjō?"
"Ninjō is human emotion, and often conflicts with gimu. A classic example is a samurai who falls for a shogun's daughter. Bound by duty, he cannot act on his feelings."
"Or an imperial guard who wishes to change careers but cannot out of familial obligation?”
― Emiko Jean, Tokyo Ever After

“Japanese aesthetics (in contrast to Western aesthetics) is more concerned with process than with product, with the actual construction of a self than with self-expression.”
― Donald Ritchie

“You can enjoy the rich, deep color and smooth feel of ebony chopsticks...
... or the mellow beauty and soft touch of lacquer chopsticks, which can be almost like works of art in themselves. And I think you can get in touch with nature by holding those natural cedar chopsticks.”
― Tetsu Kariya, Japanese Cuisine

“The first one is red bean rice ball. Red beans and sticky rice were often steamed together to create red bean rice on celebratory occasions. It was considered to be a feast in the olden days.
Many areas in Japan still carry on the tradition of making red bean rice whenever there is something to celebrate. In that sense, I think you can say red bean rice is deeply rooted in the Japanese soul."
"That's right. I made red bean rice along with other foods when the framework of my house was completed."
"It feels very festive for some reason."
"I like the salt and sesame seasoning on it."
"The next is a hijiki rice ball. You cook the rice together with the hijiki, thin fried tofu and carrots...
...flavor it with soy sauce and make a rice ball with it.
The hijiki rice is the typical Japanese commoners' food that mixes riches from the sea and the soil together. A rice ball made of hijiki rice is one of the original Japanese foods with a long continuing history."
"Aaah. This brings back memories."
"It makes us realize that we're Japanese. It's a flavor we must not lose."
"The last rice ball of the past is dried seaweed. Dried seaweed is one of the most familiar seaweeds to the Japanese, apart from konbu, wakame and hijiki.
And the way to fully enjoy the taste of the dried seaweed...
... is to make seaweed tsukudani and use that as the filling for the rice ball.
For the tsukudani, you simmer top-quality dried seaweed in sake and soy sauce. Once you learn its taste, you will never be satisfied with eating the dried seaweed tsukudani that's commercially available."
"It tastes nothing like that one we can buy at the market."
"It's refreshing, yet has a very strong scent of seaweed."
"It's interesting to see the difference in flavor of the tsukudani filling and the seaweed wrapping the rice ball."
"Red bean rice, hijiki rice and dried seaweed tsukudani rice balls...
These are flavors that will never fade away as long as the Japanese are around.”
― Tetsu Kariya, The Joy of Rice

“These rice balls represent the responsibilities we have for the future."
"The responsibilities we have for the future?!"
"Let's start off with the stewed hard clams. In the past, they could be found anywhere. But nowadays, most of the hard clams are being imported because they can no longer be caught due to land reclamation and pollution. Hard clams from the sea nearby have now become a rarity.
Stewed hard clams are an important cultural asset that has been passed down to us since the Edo Period. But at this rate, the hard clams will be lost, and the stewed hard clams will disappear from the menu of the future.
The same with matsutake. The production of matsutake is going down every year because the mountains are not looked after with care. People hardly go to the mountains to take care of them because of the decrease in population in the mountainous regions, as well as the decrease of people who use wood as fuel. At this rate, domestic matsutake will also disappear from our tables.
And then there's the katsuobushi. How many households have their own katsuobushi shaver these days? MSG and ready-made easy seasonings have become the mainstream of cooking. The most basic Japanese tradition of using katsuobushi and konbu to make dashi is starting to disappear. Even when you use katsuobushi, you use something that has already been shaved and packed."
"He's right. Young people who have experienced shaving a katsuobushi are a minority nowadays."
"In the old days, shaving the katsuobushi was the children's job."
"The current Japanese culinary culture is one of the richest in the world. But at the same time, we are continuing to lose something we are not meant to lose. And that is not right . It is our responsibility to pass on the important cultural elements from our ancestors down to the future.”
― Tetsu Kariya, The Joy of Rice

“Even when the Japanese air was quiet and dim, death never slept.”
― Florin-Marian Hera, The Emperor's Trail

“Xin chào và cám ơn là những phép tắc ứng xử cơ bản nhất trong kinh doanh”
― Đỗ Thủy Nguyên

“With Suzuki, the commonsensical approach that would see Zen as a product of Japanese culture is inverted, and Japanese culture becomes a multifaceted expression of a unique phenomenon, or rather of a metaphysical principle named Zen.”
― Bernard Faure, Chan Insights and Oversights

“意識は宇宙です。”
― Abhijit Naskar, Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect

“宗教の統合は最大の宗教です。”
― Abhijit Naskar

“団結は生、分離は死。”
― Abhijit Naskar

“どの国も私の国、どの文化も私の文化、どの宗教も私の宗教。”
― Abhijit Naskar

“心が分断されると世界も分断される。”
― Abhijit Naskar

“普遍的な信仰は愛です。”
― Abhijit Naskar