I think, we can only write very personal matters through our experience. When I named my first novel about my son "A Personal Matter," I believe I knew the most important thing: there is not any personal matter; we must find the link between ourselves, our "personal matter," and society.

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

It is the second job of literature to create myth. But its first job is to destroy it.

The way Japan had tried to build up a modern state modelled on the West was cataclysmic.

There could be joy in destruction, too, couldn't there? Isn't Jesus Christ's Second Coming supposed to occur only after a lot of unmitigated destruction? But again, human history is fraught with tragedies in which man spared no effort to destroy with millenarian joy, only to learn that no messiah appeared afterwards.

The Japanese chose the principle of eternal peace as the basis of morality for our rebirth after the War.

By reading Huckleberry Finn I felt I was able to justify my act of going into the mountain forest at night and sleeping among the trees with a sense of security which I could never find indoors.