Top 100 A Japanese Quotes
#1. I'm proud to be Japanese and I wanted my country to succeed. I believed my system was a way that could help us become a modern industrial nation. That is why I had no problem with sharing it with other Japanese companies, even my biggest competitors.
Taiichi Ohno
#2. Ran "Inchon" - it is a brutal but gripping picture about the Korean War and for once we're the good guys & the Communists are the villains. The producer was Japanese or Korean which probably explains the preceding sentence.
Ronald Reagan
#3. There aren't many American directors here trying to direct a Japanese yakuza film. When you combine that with the fact that I don't speak much Japanese and this was an independent film I was financing myself - people were curious about what I was doing.
John Foster
#4. There's a kind of training, when you are sitting in a session in the Japanese tradition or any of the Buddhist traditions, taking your lotus posture or whatever it is. That's what you're doing.
Anne Waldman
#5. But in Japanese, there's actually not much of a relationship between the music and the words.
Utada Hikaru
#6. If you had a large vase with a big crack down the middle of it, a Japanese art museum would put the vase on a pedestal and shine a spotlight on the crack!
Arielle Ford
#7. So the story of Wild Fox Kang's attempted coup and murder of Cixi lay in darkness and obscurity for nearly a century, until the 1980s, when Chinese scholars discovered in Japanese archives the testimony of the designated killer, Bi, which established beyond doubt the existence of the plot.
Jung Chang
#8. Several died the day the bomb was dropped. Some lived six months after the explosion but died anyway. They were all lost. It was so long ago, young man. To you it is a history story. To me it is my life.
Joseph G. Peterson
#9. I would like to hook up with one of the great Japanese filmmakers, like the master that made 'Ringu,' and I would like to take 'The Wicker Man' to Japan, except this time he's a ghost.
Nicolas Cage
#10. The Japanese scientists just found a 25,000-year-old mammoth in the ice in Siberia, and they're about to clone it ... You think the Japanese of all people would want nothing to do with prehistoric animals after what happened with Godzilla.
Greg Giraldo
#11. I guess anime helped me understand the Japanese culture a little better and makes me want to honor certain language nuances that don't always translate to English.
Laura Bailey
#12. I had Japanese once. A business man I had run into in New York ... but that's not what he meant.
L.M. DeWalt
#13. 'Toonami' was a tremendous vehicle, delivering the art of Japanese animation to a massive audience that may have otherwise never experienced it. I feel an immense debt of gratitude to everyone involved with the show and to every fan who supported it.
Steven Blum
#14. Take a random group of 8-year-old American and Japanese kids, give them all a really, really hard math problem, and start a stopwatch. The American kids will give up after 30, 40 seconds. If you let the test run for 15 minutes, the Japanese kids will not have given up. You have to take it away.
Malcolm Gladwell
#15. It's all about being comfortable, being easy and having you be able to wear something and not having it wear you. It's classic. Every time I've tried to be bold and crazy, I feel like a Japanese animated cartoon character.
Jennifer Aniston
#16. Having met other immigrants like myself in America, I can say that a great number of us came to our same "Oriental" identity in a similar fashion. We arrived in the United States as Japanese or Korean or Filipino, but over time we became Orientals.
Alex Tizon
#17. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were atomized at a time when the Japanese were suing desperately for peace.
David T. Dellinger
#18. 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 clearly as if He were viewing pictures in a peep-box.
Ryunosuke Akutagawa
#19. It has often been said that [ ... ] the Japanese [are] geniuses at taking foreign ideas and adding a unique finishing touch.
Robert Reed
#20. Build high-speed, electrified trains over the most-traveled corridors. It'sreally hard to power carbon-free airplanes, but electrified trains are much easier. We'll be a half century behind the Japanese, but better late than never.
Denis Hayes
#21. I can't imagine Japanese food without dashi, a broth made with kelp and dried bonito flakes. It has the aroma of the sea, tinged with a subtle smokiness, and adds a very important, distinct flavor.
Nobu Matsuhisa
#22. I just fell in love with his music. I thought Yanni was Japanese. I didn't have any idea what a Yanni was. I just thought I was in love with a Japanese man who wrote beautiful music.
Linda Evans
#23. His conclusion, preserved for posterity, was that the experiment of interning families of suspected nationalities - German, Japanese, Italians, and others - was a failure. Nonetheless,
Jan Jarboe Russell
#24. A faint tear wet Meiko's eye, so slight a bit of moisture that it passed unseen by Yasuko. Yet all the anguish of which she never spoke was compressed into that single drop
Fumiko Enchi
#25. Carrie lay on the bed and gazed at the ceiling. She was back in business. It was a day to remember. December 7, the same day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The next day America declared war on Japan.
America declared war. And she was a whore again.
Jackie Collins
#26. I designed a sports car, the Cizeta-Moroder, with Marcello Gandini from Lamborghini; he did the Countach, of course. The Cizeta cost $600,000, but we could bargain - if a Japanese businessman says he wants it for three, fine.
Giorgio Moroder
#27. I think that American people really know how to pursue fun, they really know how to have a good time. Japanese are somewhat more reserved than Americans, so I'm jealous.
Nobuo Uematsu
#28. One of the reasons they [the Japanese] have bad eyesight is probably these microscopic characters [furigana] which have many lines and strokes to them.& We wonder why they went mad and bombed Pearl Harbor when they knew they couldn't win. That [the Japanese language] would be a reason.
L. Ron Hubbard
#29. The Japanese are a disease of the skin ... the Communists are a disease of the heart. Everything personal was political ... Two reds sandwiching a black ...
Jung Chang
#30. I've had quite a lot of bad experiences with Japanese sweets. I reckon, Japanese ... they can do most things really well but sweets, they're a bit dodgy.
Ian Graham
#31. In order to comprehend the beauty of a Japanese garden, it is necessary to understand - or at least to learn to understand - the beauty of stone.
Lafcadio Hearn
#32. We can't, little cricket. It is against the law to fly this flag - even to put up a picture of it. Korea is part of the Japanese Empire now. But someday this will be our own country once more. Your own country.
Linda Sue Park
#33. The Japanese seem to be a loyal audience.
Herb Alpert
#34. When you look at Japanese traditional architecture, you have to look at Japanese culture and its relationship with nature. You can actually live in a harmonious, close contact with nature - this very unique to Japan.
Tadao Ando
#35. The Japanese think it strange we paint our old wooden houses when it takes so long to find the wabi in them. They prefer the bonsai tree after the valiant blossoming is over, the leaves fallen. When bareness reveals a merit born in the vegetable struggling.
Jack Gilbert
#36. One evening, Mike Myers and Steven Spielberg were discussing 'Goldmember,' and I just happened to joke, 'If you need a Japanese character, let me know!' The next day, they called me for audition! I find it's always helpful to maintain a sense of humour.
Nobu Matsuhisa
#37. He had been inspired to start a career in the porn industry after reading the incredible tale of a Japanese man who avenged the death of his sister by going down on her best friend for seven days and seven nights.
Mark Jackman
#38. Here's the irony in what I do: When I go out to eat, I like classic French food. I like amazing Japanese food that has such a history that it goes back hundreds of years. And I also like really innovative food as well.
Grant Achatz
#39. Seppuku is Japanese for ritual suicide. I thought, What a cute name for a coat.
Lexa Doig
#40. Japanese gamers aren't really into action games right now. They're into role-playing or strategy games with a lot of stats, but action titles are still really popular across the US and Europe.
Hideo Kojima
#41. I have a lot of Japanese fans, but in Korea they seem to go crazy for me. I don't know what it is, but they seem to like my style.
Shu Qi
#42. The Japanese have a word for it. It's Judo - the art of conquering by yielding. The Western equivalent of Judo is, "Yes dear".
J. P. McEvoy
#43. The formal Washington dinner party has all the spontaneity of a Japanese imperial funeral.
Simon Hoggart
#44. 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 justice and revenge.
-the girl who played go
Shan Sa
#45. Singapore could only be taken after a siege by an army of at least 50,000 men. It is not considered possible that the Japanese would embark on such a mad enterprise.
Winston Churchill
#46. The first time I started listening to Irish music, I had a very strong connection. Strangely enough, there's a great many Japanese melodies and vocal styles that sound very much like Hungarian music. You start seeing all these cross-references and comparative, independent musical cultures.
Tom Waits
#47. There's a reason that there are oodles of young Aussies, Germans, Japanese, even Chinese backpackers traipsing around the world. They are unencumbered by debilitating student loans. No such luck for the American Theater Arts major with $120,000 in loans.
J. Maarten Troost
#48. I have a lot of Japanese friends: I grew up in Vancouver, and there's this huge Japanese population over there.
Grimes
#49. I do enjoy wearing Japanese and Italian clothing. I also enjoy my blue jeans or tennis shorts and running shoes. I like driving a Porsche because it is an elegant machine and it is a very beautiful experience to drive it. It's magnificently made.
Frederick Lenz
#50. Terri and her mother arrived. She was obviously a dedicated stage mother because she was loaded down with camera equipment, looking like a Japanese tourist.
Audrey Meadows
#51. The Japanese had a very strong belief in Bushido, death before dishonour. They were fighting for their country; they were the aggressors in World War II.
Steven Spielberg
#52. One day the world will notice that while E=mc2 ultimately gives you 177,000 dead Japanese civilians, F=ma lets you skate across a frozen lake on a winter's night, the wind caressing your face as you glide toward the hot-chocolate stand on the far shore.
James K. Morrow
#53. Writing in other voices is almost Japanese in the sense that there's a certain formality there which allows me to sidestep the embarrassment of directly expressing to complete strangers the most intimate details of my life.
Suzanne Vega
#54. Well, only Japanese may understand it, but I'm like a goat or something that likes high places.
Tamae Watanabe
#55. In Japanese swordsmanship, it is not uncommon to speak of a unity of mind, body, and sword.
H.E. Davey
#56. For instance, Visser, the Dutchman, had sold German machine guns to the Chinese, spied for the Japanese and served a term of imprisonment for killing a coolie in Batavia. He was not an easy man to handle.
Eric Ambler
#57. The entrenched interests of the regional nobility prevented the proper functioning of a government built upon ethical practice. While high-minded scholars often called for reforms, their memoranda carried little weight with an idle aristocracy.
Joan Stanley-Baker
#58. But shame is not a pleasant feeling, and some Japanese politicians are always trying to change our children's history textbooks so that these genocides and tortures are not taught to the next generation. By changing our history and our memory, they try to erase all our shame.
Ruth Ozeki
#59. Tantric Zen is for someone who is really broad-minded. It is Bodhidharma's Zen, your Zen, my Zen. Which doesn't mean I have a problem with Japanese Zen. Most Japanese Zen is minding your p's and q's.
Frederick Lenz
#60. I'd forgotten I'd done the anime called Spirited Away, the English version of a Japanese film.
David Ogden Stiers
#61. It is often said that the Japanese are extremely clean at home, or inside any house or office, but dirty and untidy outside. 'Go and look at a railway station,' I was told, 'and you'll be horrified.' I went and was horrified; horrified by the cleanliness of the place.
George Mikes
#62. What I want for Christmas is to be a Japanese pop star. [Laughs] Santa can't exactly put that under the tree, but I'm hoping that some magic will happen overseas.
Candice Accola
#63. Psychologically, Japanese women depend largely on each other. In their sex-segregated society, they could be criticized for living in a female ghetto, and yet they have what some American feminists are trying to build, a "women's culture" with its own customs, values and even language.
Kittredge Cherry
#64. I'm old enough to remember the end of World War II. On Aug. 14, 1946, a year after the Japanese were defeated, most newspapers and magazines had single articles commemorating the end of the war.
Harry Browne
#65. And Philippe won't speak English. She's sure he can - he's got that European je ne sais quoi that usually means Oh, I speak six languages. And a little Japanese.
Ellen Sussman
#66. I'm trying to talk to my kids in Japanese, because I'm not a pro English speaker. My wife speaks to them in English. That's her first language. I don't want my kids to feel the same as me when I was studying English. It was so frustrating.
Miyavi
#67. A Japanese can live on a teaspoonful of rice a day. We were the best breed of worker they had ever hired in their lives.
Julie Otsuka
#68. A Japanese man festooned with cameras, a nun, a young girl in braids.
Anne Tyler
#69. I'm sure one of the frustrations of being a Western enthusiast of Japanese food and culture is you're confronted every day with the absolute certainty that you will die ignorant.
Anthony Bourdain
#70. I have a tattoo on my foot that says 'it's a whale' in Japanese, because Japanese people kill whales. My stuffed whale was like most children's teddy bear. I took it with me everywhere. I slept with it. I couldn't live without my whale.
Skylar Grey
#71. As a Japanese actor, I really want to work with a lot of actors and actresses in the world and many directors who have many different kinds of talents. I feel like nationally doesn't matter at all.
Ken Watanabe
#72. I love crafting. Knitting, decoupage, scrapbooking, any "lady-ish" art form, I'm a fan. For about six months each. Then I shove all the supplies in a closet, alongside the skeletons of long dead New Year's resolutions, like saber fencing, playing the ukulele, and Japanese brush painting.
Felicia Day
#73. Manga uses Japanese traditional structures in how to teach the student and to transmit a very direct message. You learn from the teacher by watching from behind his back. The whole teacher-master thing is part of Asian culture, I think.
Takashi Murakami
#74. I think if 'The Narrow Road To The Deep North' is one of the high points of Japanese culture, then the experience of my father, who was a slave laborer on the Death Railway, represents one of its low points.
Richard Flanagan
#75. The President regards the Japanese as a brave people; but courage, though useful in time of war, is subordinate to knowledge of arts; hence, courage without such knowledge is not to be highly esteemed.
Townsend Harris
#76. 1936 is a very important year: a golden time for martial arts, right before the Japanese invasion.
Wong Kar-Wai
#77. The best way to learn Japanese is to be born as a Japanese baby, in Japan, raised by a Japanese family.
Dave Barry
#78. To tell others that
It is a rumor
Will not do.
When your own heart asks
How will you respond?
Gosen Wakashu
#80. Dashi remains unfamiliar to most French and American cooks, who tend to reach for a bouillon cube to do many of the same things. But dashi is worth preparing and using the way the Japanese do: for poaching fish, as a soup base, and in simmered dishes.
Nobu Matsuhisa
#81. There was a man of the cloth - Reverend Shibata of the First Baptist Church - who left urging everyone to forgive and forget. There was a man in a shiny brown suit - fry cook Kanda of Yabu Noodle - who left urging Reverend Shibata to give it a rest.
Julie Otsuka
#82. The term "spirit projection" sprang to mind. Are you familiar with it? Japanese folk tales are full of this sort of thing, where the soul temporarily leaves the body and goes off a great distance to take care of some vital task and then returns to reunite with the body.
Haruki Murakami
#83. (Japanese Government believes that if you have a big laboratory with all the latest equipment and good funding it will automatically lead to creativity. It doesn't work that way.
Akio Morita
#84. I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation.
Robert Morgan
#85. Drug deficiency. It was a Sprawl voice and a Sprawl joke. The Chatsubo was a bar for professional expatriates; you could drink there for a week and never hear two words in Japanese.
William Gibson
#86. While foreign competitors, French or Japanese or German, merrily bid for contracts abroad, American companies find themselves tangled in a web of legislation designed to express disapproval, block trade in certain commodities, or perhaps deny resources to disfavored or hostile regimes.
Elliott Abrams
#87. Sometimes the person wouldn't be in the photo at all. I asked what they would post instead. "A lot of Japanese use their cats," she said. "They're not in the photo with the cat?" I asked. "Nope. Just the cat. Or their rice cooker.
Aziz Ansari
#88. The Japanese Co-Prosperity Zone began as a racist utopia and ended as a cross between an abbatoir, a plantation and a brothel.
Niall Ferguson
#89. Throw a hand grenade into a German pillbox and they come out with hands reaching for the sky and shouting "Kamerad!" Throw a hand grenade into a Japanese pillbox and they throw it right back at you. It
Holland M. Smith
#90. In seven days God had created the Earth. In a single day mankind had turned it upside down.
Kristina McMorris
#91. Well, dojo is a traditional Japanese word for training hall.
Joseph Jarman
#92. 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.
Haruki Murakami
#94. It was decorated with Japanese fans and Chinese lanterns, which gave it a very Old English effect.
Saki
#95. It's a Japanese way of thinking, that I give value for my merchandise. So I don't want to sell unnecessarily expensive dresses and make just 10 or 20 and then feel satisfied. I want to design for real women who can afford my dresses.
Tadashi Shoji
#96. First, there is the bare beauty of the logs themselves with their long lines and firm curves. Then there is the open charm felt of the structural features which are not hidden under plaster and ornament, but are clearly revealed, a charm felt in Japanese architecture.
Gustav Stickley
#97. To help cement the friendship between Japan and Disney, Emperor Hirohito personally presented to Roy O. Disney, for the dedication of the Magic Kingdom, a stone Japanese lantern known as a Toro to light the way to success and happiness.
Jim Korkis
#98. All of a sudden, there are great Japanese films, or great Italian films, or great Australian films. It's usually because there are a number of people that cross-pollinated each other.
Francis Ford Coppola
#99. I have a strange illusion quite often. I think I've become deaf. I have to make a little noise to prove I'm not. I clear my throat to show myself that everything is normal. It's like the little Japanese girl they found in the ruins of Hiroshima. Everything dead; and she was singing to her doll.
John Fowles
#100. Right after I graduated high school, I joined a sushi restaurant to learn how to make Japanese food. And then spent seven years. Then that time - that's enough. Then sushi restaurant - butchering fish and they make your body smell like fishy.
Masaharu Morimoto
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