Japan's Quotes

#1. From New Year's Eve through the third of January, the streets of Tokyo grew quiet, as if all the people had disappeared.

Shogo Oketani

#2. I don't really do Japanese interviews. I don't think there's much call for me in Japan.

Nick Cave

#3. 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.

Joe Tripodi

#4. It's a saying they have, that a man has a false heart in his mouth for the world to see, another in his breast to show to his special friends and his family, and the real one, the true one, the secret one, which is never known to anyone except to himself alone, hidden only God knows where.

James Clavell

#5. But I didn't walk a single step. I stopped a lot to stretch, but I never walked. I didn't come here to walk. I came to run. That's the reason-the only reason-I flew all the way to the northern tip of Japan. No matter how slow I might run, I wasn't about to walk. That was the rule.

Haruki Murakami

#6. You don't implement change easily in Japan unless you explain very clearly why you need to do this change, how you're going to do this change and what's going to be the outcome of this change. If you offset or you forget to explain one of these three steps you're not going to do it.

Carlos Ghosn

#7. Often I'll go outside and just place my hands on the soil, even if there's no work to do on it. When I am filled with worries, I do that and I can feel the energy of the mountains and of the trees.

Andy Couturier

#8. 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

#9. The Japanese island of Okunoshima, also called "Rabbit Island" after the many furry inhabitants who live there, was once home to Japan's poison gas factories. The rabbits are descendants of ones used for chemical testing during World War II.

Cary McNeal

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

Aphex Twin

#11. We want to make America great again. We want to bring back our industry, we want to bring back our jobs from China and Japan, and by the way Mexico, which has taken so many of our jobs. And that's what it's about. I have not heard about these incidences.

Donald Trump

#12. Japan became an imperialist country in many ways, but that was much later, after it had already made big progress. I don't think Japan's wealth was based on exploiting China. Japan's wealth was based on its expansion in international trade.

Amartya Sen

#13. I'm thinking of people in rural Japan and China, where McDonald's hasn't yet arrived. These are the thinnest, healthiest, longest-lived people with the least risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Neal Barnard

#14. Miyazaki's films in Japan are bigger than Titanic. He's an incredible rock star there. In the US, they don't do as well.

Henry Selick

#15. In Japan, they have TV sets in cars right now, where you can punch up traffic routes, weather, everything! You can get Internet access already in cars in Japan, so within the next 2 to 3 years it's gonna be so crazy!

Glenn Danzig

#16. Using the Japan-U.S. alliance as a basis, it is important that we maintain and develop cooperative relations with our neighboring countries such as China, South Korea, and Russia.

Junichiro Koizumi

#17. Japan's humid and warm summer climate, as well as frequent earthquakes resulted in lightweight timber buildings raised off the ground that are resistant to earth tremors.

Harry Seidler

#18. Climate change has always been sort of my main focus. I think also with [what happened in Fukushima, Japan] there's still a lot to think about in terms of what's coming down the pike into the world's oceans, too.

Rufus Wainwright

#19. It is not a happy lot being a princess in any country, but especially Japan in which every tiny aspect of one's life is governed by the most rigid rules of protocol.

Kathryn Lasky

#20. Girly' products can spur Japan's growth in this century every bit as much as, if not more than, the 'manly' technologies.

Morinosuke Kawaguchi

#21. U.S. has certainly been wanting this to happen since both Japan and Korea are longtime allies of the U.S. and this estranged relationship has prevented better cooperation.

Elise Hu

#22. When someone who's starved of love is shown something that looks like sincere affection, is it any wonder that she jumps at it and clings to it?

Sayo Masuda

#23. America and Japan are the two leading world economies in terms of technology and innovative products. And in software, information-age technology and biotechnology the U.S. has an amazing lead.

Bill Gates

#24. In Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, the government in a matter of years has put a lot of energy behind recycling food waste as livestock feed. It's environmentally friendly, it provides cheap livestock feed for the farmers in those parts of the world, and it avoids sending the food waste to landfill.

Tristram Stuart

#25. Snowboarding's tough, because you've got to go to the mountains. For me, I love the skateboard season because I get to hangout at home and still be skating. I don't have to travel to Norway or Japan or these crazy places to be snowboarding.

Shaun White

#26. When you're talking about who is doing the most exciting and interesting horror films of the last 20 years, it's Japan. I mean, they are making amazing films.

Drew Goddard

#27. I think it is not necessary at this time to put forth a grand vision such as an East Asian Community. What we must do before that is create scenarios for Japan's response in case of a serious territorial incident.

Yoshihiko Noda

#28. I decided to pursue graduate study in molecular biology and was accepted by Professor Itaru Watanabe's laboratory at the Institute for Virus Research at the University of Kyoto, one of a few laboratories in Japan where U.S.-trained molecular biologists were actively engaged in research.

Susumu Tonegawa

#29. It is Japan's mission to be supreme in Asia, the South Seas and eventually the four corners of the world.

Sadao Araki

#30. Soon we could barely recognize them. They were taller than we were, and heavier. They were loud beyond belief. I feel like a duck that's hatched goose's eggs.

Julie Otsuka

#31. I once said that it was unacceptable for Japan to remain "an isolated prosperous island." At one time, it might have been all right for Japan to avoid sending any citizens to dangerous areas [even as part of international efforts] and just wish for its own people's happiness. That time is gone.

Sadako Ogata

#32. If female were working in the same proportion as men do, the level of GDP would be up 27 percent in a country like India, but also up 9 percent in Japan and up 5 percent in the United States of America. It's not just a moral issue, not just a philosophical issue. It just makes economic sense.

Christine Lagarde

#33. He wanted to be all poetic, but in an instant he forgot Joe's poem about Japan except the part about 'you are the bell, and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,' and a new sound entered his life ...

Melina Marchetta

#34. 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

#35. U.K. citizens fleeing the Middle East and Japan have been allowed to take their animal companions with them on evacuation flights. The U.S. is not so civilized, and that's a blot on our national copybook.

Ingrid Newkirk

#36. In Japan, it's strange to openly take credit for giving to charity or even to donate publicly.

Robert Paul Weston

#37. Sometimes when you're in different countries, everything has become so homogenised and there's a Starbucks and McDonald's everywhere, and you could feel like you're in Florida. But in Japan, you know you're there.

Will Yun Lee

#38. Unlike most other facial signs of emotion, the smile is subject to learning and conscious control. In the U.S., Japan, and many other societies, children are taught to smile on purpose, e.g., in a courteous greeting, whether or not they actually feel happy.

David B. Givens

#39. The first country that I went to outside of America was Japan and I was completely shocked - especially since I was 16 and over there by myself. I was like: "I don't get it; there's nothing in English!"

Cameron Diaz

#40. The aging and decreasing population is a serious problem in many developed countries today. In Japan's case, these demographic changes are taking place at a more rapid pace than any other country has ever experienced.

Toshihiko Fukui

#41. While the characters drive the epic story of Robotech, it's the robotic mecha that capture the imagination.

Tommy Yune

#42. Japan is the most intoxicating place for me. In Kyoto, there's an inn called the Tawaraya which is quite extraordinary. The Japanese culture fascinates me: the food, the dress, the manners and the traditions. It's the travel experience that has moved me the most.

Roman Coppola

#43. The biggest development in reproductive biology is the birth-control pill. Nobody ever talks about it, but look at the consequences: demographics; aging populations; the sinking population of Europe, Japan; immigration. It's incredible.

Gregory Stock

#44. Being exposed to different production environments in Korea, Japan and the U.S. was a great experience, and each system allows you to quench your thirst in a different way.

Bae Doona

#45. Our international success started out first because we became the No. 1 casual wear brand in our home market of Japan. Then, we set up stores in the world's major fashion centers of New York, Paris and London.

Tadashi Yanai

#46. When I met Akira Kurosawa in Japan, one question he asked me was, "How did you actually make the children act the way they do? I do have children in my films but I find that I reduce and reduce their presence until I have to get rid of them because there's no way that I can direct them."

Abbas Kiarostami

#47. In Japan, you can learn how to make a bunch of flowers. This is an art. Tea ceremony, it's an art.

Carine Roitfeld

#48. It's a very confusing experience living as a woman in Japan. If your husband is white-collar, the wife is blue. Even if you marry a person of status, the wife inevitably remains a rung below.

Natsuo Kirino

#49. As the U.S. ambassador to Japan, I see this challenge of our younger generations not knowing each other as well as the prior generations.

John Roos

#50. This morning's lecture was on how to avoid ninjas, which might have been interesting if step one hadn't been "Stay out of Japan." Furthermore, Crandall had quickly become sidetracked,

Stuart Gibbs

#51. I saw the various museum displays including scenes of torture while feeling heartfelt remorse and sorrow over the great pain and suffering inflicted on South Koreans by Japan's colonial rule,

Junichiro Koizumi

#52. When you're in an extreme situation you tend to avoid facing it by getting caught up in little details. Like a guy who's decided to commit suicide and boards a train only to become obsessed with whether he remembered to lock the door when he left home.

Ryu Murakami

#53. As the largest and most developed democracies of Asia (India and Japan), we have a mutual stake in each other's progress and prosperity.

Manmohan Singh

#54. Golf's really fun in Japan because of the women caddies ... I saw one guy start out playing alone with his caddie. By the 9th hole they were engaged and when they finished on 18 they had a foursome.

Bob Hope

#55. I observed a man sourcing candle wax from South America and selling it to Japan. I thought: 'That's unbelievable. Talking on the phone in his office, that man made money moving candle wax from one country to another.' It really interested me.

Ivan Glasenberg

#56. Pam has always been my glamorous big sister - 13 years older than I. She played on the women's circuit for nine years and came home to tell me stories of France, Japan.

Tracy Austin

#57. In Japan, I live in a little neighborhood in the middle of nowhere. I don't have a bicycle or a car or anything, so my only movement is within the boundaries of my feet. I feel there's a need for that kind of conscientious objection to the momentum of the world.

Pico Iyer

#58. In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan's writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.

Haruki Murakami

#59. No, ramen's not good for you. But in Japan, our favorite thing to do after drinking all night, especially in Sapporo where it's freezing cold, is to go to the ramen place at two, three in the morning.

Cary Fukunaga

#60. The principal linkages between Japan and the U.S. global economies are trade, financial markets, and commodity markets.

Mark Zandi

#61. They have some pretty tough gun laws in Japan, as they do in any other civilized country in the world, and they're not killing each other off with firearms. You have very violent films in Europe, yet it's not causing the mayhem we see in our streets routinely here.

Michael D. Barnes

#62. It is my policy to deepen the Japan-U.S. alliance and to deepen security and economic relations as well as personal exchanges.

Yoshihiko Noda

#63. Your daughter's coming of age, you ought to let her see the world a little.

Susumu Katsumata

#64. Oh, she's still here;
she's just not as pretty ... anymore.

Katlyn Charlesworth

#65. Japan. So successful was the Japanese 'welfare superpower' that by the 1970s life expectancy in Japan had become the longest in the world. But that, combined with a falling birth rate, has produced the world's oldest society, with more than 21 per cent of the population already over the age of 65.

Niall Ferguson

#66. 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.

Shinzo Abe

#67. Here's an uplifting story. Congratulations to the Little League team from Huntington Beach, California. Yeah, they beat Japan to win the Little League World Series. That's pretty good. See, that proves that when math and science aren't involved, our kids can beat anybody.

Jay Leno

#68. The downturn following the collapse of Japan's so-called bubble economy of the 1980s was not as severe as the Great Depression.

Ben Bernanke

#69. Even Billy Andrews' boy is going - and Jane's only son - and Diana's little Jack," said Mrs. Blythe. "Priscilla's son has gone from Japan and Stella's from Vancouver - and both the Rev. Jo's boys. Philippa writes that her boys 'went right away, not being afflicted with her indecision.

L.M. Montgomery

#70. It was as if - this something I thought of only later, of course - she was gently peeling back one layer after another that covered a person's heart, a very sensual feeling.

Haruki Murakami

#71. In Japan, I took part in a tea ceremony. You go into a small room, tea is served, and that's it really, except that everything is done with so much ritual and ceremony that a banal daily event is transformed into a moment of communion with the universe.

Okakura Kakuzo

#72. I've been interested in Japan since the 1930s, when I read about Japan's vicious crimes in Manchuria and China.

Noam Chomsky

#73. In two or three minutes Mr. Roosevelt came through. "Mr. President, what's this about Japan?" "It's quite true," he replied. "They have attacked us at Pearl Harbour. We are all in the same boat now.

Winston S. Churchill

#74. In England, there is a dividing line between artists and illustrators, who are thought inferior to painters. Well, that's absolute rubbish. Some of the most creative work is being done in children's books. In Japan, everything is art. They don't say painting is better than ceramics or dress design.

Brian Wildsmith

#75. There is no madder nation than Japan ... And that nation has the highest rate of suicide, has the highest rate of thick-lens glasses and did the most suicidal trick a few years ago. It's the doggonedest country.

L. Ron Hubbard

#76. My first year in Japan was very tough, just like my first year in the minors. But at least there I had a lot of Dominican people and Latin people I can talk to. If you don't have anybody to talk to, you can get depressed. But if you find someone who talks your language, it's easier.

Alfonso Soriano

#77. Obscurity is Japan's outermost defense. The country doesn't want to be understood.

David Mitchell

#78. I was in Japan, and my assistant director had worked with Kurosawa. I used quite of number of Kurosawa's crew.

John Boorman

#79. During this period, Japan's peaceful commercial relations were successively obstructed, primarily by the American rupture of commercial relations, and this was a grave threat to the survival of Japan.

Hideki Tojo

#80. In the 1970s, Japan moved into the U.S. turf with its televisions, cars, chips, and steel. But if you think about it, the only business Japan destroyed was the U.S. television industry.

Fujio Mitarai

#81. Every time I go to Japan and meet Capcom it is like going to see the Umbrella Corporation. You ask them things and they won't give you a straight answer about anything.

Paul W. S. Anderson

#82. Here you had the top professional soldier in Japan, and to think he didn't know how to kill himself with a gun! They took him straight to the hospital, he got the best care the American medical team could give him, recovered, then was tried and hanged. It's a terrible way to die.

Haruki Murakami

#83. China will be the answer to Japan's problems.

Carlos Ghosn

#84. One of my books, 'Rain Falling on My Face,' earned me the 39th Edogawa Ranpo prize. It's a very prestigious literary prize in Japan, mostly for mysteries and thrillers.

Natsuo Kirino

#85. The leg drop was a move that nobody really used, and nobody ever hit the ropes and jumped up really high, so I tried it out in Japan and the people loved it. That's how I came up with it.

Hulk Hogan

#86. I'll just be the first to say that Ken [Watanabe] should be a national treasure in Japan, because he is an unbelievably talented actor. You couldn't find more of a gentleman. He's sweet, he's kind and he's extremely thoughtful in the work that he does.

Leonardo DiCaprio

#87. The first comfort women didn't actually come forward until 1992, and since then, the issue has really been kicked up. Japan issued a 1993 acknowledgement on this. It's called the Kono Agreement. But in recent years, South Korea has been wanting an apology to go much further.

Elise Hu

#88. But in Japan, there's nothing like that, since the temple is made of wood. The divine spirit inside the building is eternal, so the enclosure doesn't have to be.

Tadao Ando

#89. In Japan, employees occasionally work themselves to death. It's called Karoshi. I don't want that to happen to anybody in my department. The trick is to take a break as soon as you see a bright light and hear dead relatives beckon.

Scott Adams

#90. Allowing Islamic Sharia law into the constitutions of the U.S-created Islamic (!) Republic of Afghanistan and Republic of Iraq in 2004 and 2005 was as foolhardy as it would have been to write emperor-worship and Shinto militarism into Japan's 1946 constitution.

Robert Spencer

#91. My favourite two festivals have always been the Big Day Out and Summersonic in Japan. The Big Day Out is a little more fun because it lasts longer. It's like an abbreviated version of the Warped tour because you get to play with the same people every day, which is really fun.

Gerard Way

#92. We believe in fair exchange rates and Japan doesn't practice that. They have massive U.S. dollar reserves, and they use them to intervene regularly.

Rick Wagoner

#93. Well the least favourite question is the one that one's asked particularly about in Japan is what's the difference between theatre and cinema and I think, well, that's about eighty bucks.

Andrew Lloyd Webber

#94. 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.

Daisaku Ikeda

#95. My parents came from the Kyushu Island in the Southern part of Japan to find work in Tokyo. So we could only afford to live downtown, in a low-income area. It was just by the river, and whenever a typhoon came around, we were under water up to, like, here. That's the kind of place we lived in.

Takashi Murakami

#96. Gossip [is] the Devil's radio: Don't be a broadcaster.

George Harrison

#97. The staff at the Institute will present an analysis on how asset price fluctuations and subsequent structural adjustments influence sustained economic growth, based on Japan's experience since the second half of the 1980s.

Toshihiko Fukui

#98. Really interesting genre films, especially monster movies, evoke the fears of the times intentionally. Our starting point was 'Godzilla' - the original movie was released less than 10 years after Hiroshima, and it's a classic in Japan.

Matt Reeves

#99. Whatever doubts or vexations one has in Japan, it is only necessary to ask one's self: Well, who are the best people to live with?

Lafcadio Hearn

#100. The amount of U.S. debt held by countries such as China and Japan is at a historic high, with foreign investors holding half of America's publicly held debt. This dependence raises the specter that other nations will be able to influence our policies in ways antithetical to American interests.

Evan Bayh