I have a doggy, a Japanese Akita, who I live to play with.

Last year nothing happenedThe year before nothing happenedAnd the year before that nothinghappened.

something the Japanese side should seriously reflect on.

As you can imagine, those who had fallen this far had been so worn down by their tortures in the seven other hells that they no longer had the strength to cry out.

For Sayonara, literally translated, ‘Since it must be so,’ of all the good-bys I have heard is the most beautiful. Unlike the Auf Wiedershens and Au revoirs, it does not try to cheat itself by...

And then there was her face: her white skin, her brown eyes, and her expression, so soft and beautiful; she looked as though she were constantly getting ready to ask a question. Even an immaculately...

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one’s heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find...

When I was walking in the mountains with the Japanese man and began to hear the water, he said, ‘What is the sound of the waterfall?’ ‘Silence,’ he finally told me.

It would seem that the more irresponsible and crafty one is, the more likely one is to have a talent for storytelling.

I know I have a pretty good sense for music, but she was better than me. I used to think it was such a waste! I thought, ‘If only she had started out with a...

Directly beneath the Lotus Pond of Paradise lay the lower depths of Hell, and as He peered through the crystalline waters, He could see the River of Three Crossings and the Mountain of Needles as...

Als ich sehe, wie Harus Haar verspielt im Wind tanzt und völlig zerzaust wird, und das, obwohl das Grau da draußen doch bleischwer in der Luft lastet, erkenne ich auf einmal, wie weit, weit weg...

In a time like this, let us trust in God even more. To trust when life is easy is no trust.

I have been brought up in a world dominated by honor. I have known neither crime, poverty, nor betrayal, and here I taste hatred for the first time: it is sublime, like a thirst for...

Haiku does not express emotion from the inside out by displaying the mind of a character. Haiku builds the emotional thrust, makes the artistic statement from the outside in, from the physical world to the...

Bushido is realized in the presence of death. This means choosing death whenever there is a choice between life and death. There is no other reasoning.

I was living for one thing only, and that was to confirm my own lack of feeling.

Great robber though he was, Kandata could only trash about like a dying frog as he choked on the blood of the pond.

You know Americans…Self-improvement. No matter who or what we are, we’re always working on ways to become somebody else.

Welcome to thee,O sword of eternity!Through BuddhaAnd through Daruma alikeThou hast cleft thy way.

Dad says there are more than three thousand letters in the Japanese alphabet, which could pose a problem. There are only twenty-six letters in the English alphabet, and I get into enough trouble with them...

I think I was a Japanese schoolgirl in another life. That’s how much I love Hello Kitty.

My fake Japanese was smooth enough to earn me the title of ‘The Emperor of Pleasing Graciousness’ in that country.

If love goes too far, it turns into cruelty.

I could have sworn that the man’s eyes were no longer watching his daughter dying in agony, that instead the gorgeous colors of flames and the sight of a woman suffering in them were giving...

…and where shall we go from here? The Library is vast and infinite.

To be pleasant, gentle, calm and self-possessed: this is the basis of good taste and charm in a woman. No matter how amorous or passionate you may be, as long as you are straightforward and...

Ichigo Ichie–Nishikado Soujiroh

I was in Shanghai when the Japanese invaded China. I was there in Shanghai when, the morning after Pearl Harbor, they seized Shanghai.

Mrs Guinea answered my letter and invited me to lunch at her home. That was where I saw my first finger-bowl.The water had a few cherry blossoms floating in it, and I thought it must...

My favorite kitchen was the Japanese and the Italian kitchen.

Chained inside the carriage is a sinful woman. When we set the carriage afire, her flesh will be roasted, her bones will be charred: she will die an agonizing death. Never again will you have...

What I always say is that Japanese are like willow. We can be bent easily, but once you try to break us, it would not be so easy.

The bond between husband and wife is a strong one. Suppose the man had hunted her out and brought her back. The memory of her acts would still be there, and inevitably, sooner or later,...

Great art projects a sense of inexhaustibility. In literature, particularly in poetry, this may be accomplished through ambiguity: Beneath each and every meaning that I can descry lie others, so that rereading holds out the...

From the moment of my birth, I lived with pain at the center of my life. My only purpose in life was to find a way to coexist with intense pain.

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...

I’ll make you so in love with me, that everytime our lips touch, you’ll die a little death.

I was to Japanese visitors to Washington what the Mona Lisa is to Americans visiting Paris.

Still more horrible was the color of the flames that licked the latticed cabin vents before shooting skyward, as though – might I say? – the sun itself had crashed to earth, spewing its heavenly...

I mutter and mutter and no one to listen. I speak my words in Japanese and my daughter will not hear them. The words that come from our ears, our mouths, they collide in the...

If you examine this, I think that you will find that it’s the mechanics of Japanese architecture that have been thought of as the direct influence upon our architecture.

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

Within two or three years of World War II’s end, starvation had been basically eliminated in Japan, and yet the Japanese had continued slaving away as if their lives depend on it. Why? To create...

In this world, not everything will be won by justice. If you want to win, you have to learn how to cheat. (Nana)

The heart of mine is only one, it cannot be known by anybody but myself.

The pale whiteness of her upturned face as she choked on the smoke; the tangled length of her hair as she tried to shake the flames from it; the beauty of her cherry-blossom robe as...

I like the relaxed way in which the Japanese approach religion. I think of myself as basically a moral person, but I’m definitely not religious, and I’m very tired of the preachiness and obsession with...

Since then there’s been no boycotts of Japanese products at all.

No, I don’t want your money. The world moves less by money than by what you owe people and what they owe you. I don’t like to owe anybody anything, so I keep to myself...