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

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.

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.

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

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

Paradoxically, the people and state of Japan living on such moral props were not innocent but had been stained by their own past history of invading other Asian countries.

The people of Hiroshima went to work at once to restore human society in the aftermath of the great atomic flood. They were concerned to salvage their own lives, but in the process they also salvaged the souls of the people who have brought the atomic bomb.