Quotes About Japan

Japan, not only a mega-busy city that thrives on electronics and efficiency, actually has an almost sacred appreciation of nature. One must travel outside of Tokyo to truly experience the 'old Japan' and more importantly feel these aspects of Japanese culture.

We discussed the history of postwar Japan and how Japan had missed an opportunity to build a more functional democracy because of the focus on fighting communism driven in large part by the American occupation.

A very enjoyable meditation on the curious thing called 'Zen' -not the Japanese religious tradition but rather the Western clich of Zen that is embraced in advertising, self-help books, and much more. . . . Yamada, who is both a scholar of Buddhism and a student of archery, offers refreshing insight into Western stereotypes of Japan and Japanese culture, and how these are received in Japan.

Since ancient times, people from throughout Asia have brought to Japan their talents, knowledge and energy, helping to lay the basis for Japan's existence as a country.

Japan will change. Let's create a country where innovation is constantly happening, giving birth to new industries to lead the world, when I visit Silicon Valley I want to think about how we can take Silicon Valley's ways and make them work in Japan.

We can't attribute a long history of democratic traditions to Japan, either, but today Japan boasts a fully-fledged democracy in which governments change according to democratic procedures. It's no coincidence that the Taiwanese, Japanese, and South Korean economies are among the most innovative in Asia.

Japan should not intervene in other countries' conflicts by using military power. And I don't think Japan is capable of doing such things. For starters, I don't believe our country has sufficient human resources to make that type of international contribution.

We're not going to walk into the World Cup thinking, 'Ah, you know, we beat Norway 5-0 and we beat Japan so now we're great and we're untouchable'. It's a reality check for a few guys and that's a good thing at this time so it doesn't happen on June 12 (when the U.S. team opens World Cup play against the Czech Republic).

The conflict between Japan and Chiang is little affected by the fall of the Wuhan cities and Sino-Japanese hostilities have just started.

I believe that this is not only the view of the people on both sides of the Strait. It is also the common expectation of the US, Japan and the international community.

North Korea will never give up its arsenal. It's all that is keeping us alive. Look at Saddam Hussein - and we never forget that North Korea was named as part of the "axis of evil" a year before the United States invaded Iraq. Do you think we would be stupid enough to believe American promises after all this? We are a nuclear power. That is not negotiable. We are willing to talk about limits freezes - but we would need to be given something in return security, in the form of diplomatic recognition by Washington and guarantees of nonaggression from China, Japan and the United States.

I went to the Tokyo Film Festival in Japan because I love Japanese cinema.

We've also started promoting in Japan, and compared to TVXQ sunbaes, we still have to secure a place. We all like TVXQ very much. We hope this time we'll use the chance to become more intimate with the members.

Yesterday, December 7, 1941 a date which will live in infamy the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan... We will gain the inevitable triumph so help us God.

A handful of men working within the Zen sect of Buddhism created gardens in fifteenth-century Japan which were, and still are, far more than merely an aesthetic expression. And what is left of the earlier Mogul gardens in India suggests that their makers were acquainted with what lay behind the flowering of the Sufi movement in High Asia and so sought to add further dimensions to their garden scenes.

Back in 1956, we signed a treaty and surprisingly it was ratified both by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and the Japanese Parliament. But then Japan refused to implement it and after that the Soviet Union also, so to say, nullified all the agreements reached within the framework of the treaty.

...Poetic injustice...having made over Japan in our own image. The Japanese, ...are now, next to us, the greatest consumers of meat in the world.

Games are considered to be in the sub-culture category, coming under movies, coming under manga or comics or animation, especially in Japan.

With vinyl you had twenty-two minutes per side. CDs came along, and you had sixty, seventy, eighty minutes and people felt like they had to fill them up. They were like those Fuji apples from Japan. They look like perfect, super-gigantic versions of American apples.

I really liked the food in Japan. There is something so organized, neat, and methodical about it. They put a lot of care and quality into their cooking. I also love Mediterranean, New American, and Italian food, because the cuisines borrow influences from all over the world.

People tell us the countries that we'll have the most difficulty with are France and Japan. They say, 'Nothing you do in the rest of the world will work for us.' But that's changing. The differences are narrowing.

China will be the answer to Japan's problems.

We face the delicate question of the diplomatic fencing to be done so as to be sure Japan is put into the wrong and makes the first bad move. ... The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot.

No compromise is possible and the victory of the democracies can only be complete with the utter defeat of the war machines of Germany and Japan.

I was told that [Japan journalists] wanted to see my dog, Yume. You can see that she is in great shape.

Turkey, Australia, and Japan are three of my top destinations.

There seems also to be a tremendous risk to indigenous cultures if we insist that all scholarship be conducted in English. We are, for example, dealing with ancient and very highly-developed cultures in Korea, Japan, China and the Middle East. What is the impact on cultural and scholarly vitality forcing everyone to do their work in English? I do not have an answer, but this issue has been very much on my mind.

In Japan we have the phrase, "Shoshin," which means "beginner's mind." Our "original mind" includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything. It is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.

We are natural partners [with Japan] in the world and the Far East, but the absence of a peace treaty does not allow us to develop the full range of our relations. Therefore, we will naturally strive to sign this treaty.

Listen - God only exists in people's minds. Especially in Japan, God's always been kind of a flexible concept. Look at what happened after the war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person. So after 1946 he wasn't God anymore. That's what Japanese gods are like--they can be tweaked and adjusted. Some American comping on a cheap pipe gives the order and presto change-o--God's no longer God. A very postmodern kind of thing. If you think God's there, He is. If you don't, He isn't.

It's only interesting when you're from somewhere else, like America or Japan. The further away the more interesting it is.

Those Oriental people work like dogs. That’s why they’re successful in life. I went to Seoul, South Korea, I went to Taipei, Taiwan. I went to Tokyo, Japan. That’s why these people are so hard workers. I’m telling you, the Oriental people, they’re slowly taking over.

The new century demands new partnerships for peace and security. The United Nations plays a crucial role, with allies sharing burdens America might otherwise bear alone. America needs a strong and effective U.N. I want to work with this new Congress to pay our dues and our debts. We must continue to support security and stability in Europe and Asia - expanding NATO and defining its new missions, maintaining our alliance with Japan, with Korea, with our other Asian allies, and engaging China.

I don't really think that audiences are that much different. I think that a fan is the same whether you are from here or from Japan - you come to a show because you like the music. I don't really see much of a difference anywhere.

If a movie is nominated for, say, an Academy award, that movie will instantly become popular in Japan. There's always been a bit of a complex the Japanese have about being taken seriously in the West.

Members of the Rae Chorze-Fwaz order trace their origins back through Tibet, Japan, China, India, and ancient Egypt to the place the order was founded, the lost continent of Atlantis.

America looks 10 minutes ahead; Japan looks 10 years.

The American oligarchy increasingly has less in common with the American people than it does with the equivalent oligarchies in Germany or Mexico or Japan.

For decades, Japan has been a friend and reliable trading partner with the United States, and I anticipate that relationship will prosper.

I want to reassure our allies in Japan and South Korea and elsewhere that we have mutual defense treaties and we will honor them.

I love Japan, and Tokyo is my favorite city.

In space, you can't see the borders. It doesn't look like a map. We're all like kids fighting in a sandbox, on the political and human side of it. The International Space Station was built in orbit. Each piece hurtled into space at eight kilometres per second. From an engineering point of view, it's madness. It's also a feat of policy - Russia, the U.S., Germany and Japan working together. Do you realize what that means? These countries were sending nukes to each other a generation ago. Space does that. It gives us that amazing big picture.

We're not necessarily the ski boat, we're the skier. There are countries like Japan and Korea and others who are the ski boat at this point, but we're getting pulled right behind them.

Judo has been part of Japanese culture for a long time. It makes sense to me that this sport, which is both athletic and philosophical, was created in Japan. It is based on respect for the partner and for our elders as our teachers, which is very important and makes a strong, positive contribution to human relationships, and not only in sports. I am happy that life brought me to this wonderful sport as a child. It is like my first love.

The U.S. along with China, Japan, South Korea and Russia has an important role to play in containing North Korea's nuclear ambitions and exerting all the influence we can possibly exert.

Every country that meets Buddhism molds it into their own indigenous religion, as America will. A very clear example of this is Japan, which threw out almost all the dharma, and just kept that essence, which spoke to them.

I attended a big human space flight conference in Beijing and I was going as myself. And really, there weren't any NASA astronauts there, I was the only so-called American Astronaut there. We had astronauts from most of the other countries, certainly from Russia, from France, from Japan, several other countries, but it was a little bit odd because here we are at an international gathering of a lot of astronauts and I'm talking about somewhere upwards of 30 or so astronauts, and I'm the only American. And I wasn't even there in an official capacity.

When you're a kid and you're in a classroom, anybody would die to be hanging out in London or having their sixteenth birthday in Japan.