From another point of view, a new situation now seems to be arising in which Japan's prosperity is going to be incorporated into the expanding potential power of both production and consumption in Asia at large.

The ambiguous orientation of Japan drove the country into the position of an invader in Asia.

To be upright and to have an imagination: that is enough to be a very good young man.

If any suffering was fruitless it was the agony of a hangover; what he suffered now could not expiate suffering of any other kind.

After the end of the Second World War it was a categorical imperative for us to declare that we renounced war forever in a central article of the new Constitution.

However, please allow me to say that the fundamental style of my writing has been to start from my personal matters and then to link it up with society, the state and the world.

The writer's job is the job of a clown …the clown who also talks about sorrow.