Japan's Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. 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

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

Morinosuke Kawaguchi

#5. 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

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

Sadao Araki

#7. 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

#8. 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

#9. 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

#10. 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

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

Noam Chomsky

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

David Mitchell

#13. 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

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

Carlos Ghosn

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. Self-deception ultimately explains Japan's plight. The Japanese have never accepted that change is in their interest - and not merely a response to U.S. criticism.

Paul Samuelson

#19. Japan's alliance with the U.S. will only grow in importance amid the increasingly difficult security situation surrounding our country, thus I think it is necessary to keep the marines in Okinawa, a geographically strategic location from the standpoint of maintaining deterrence.

Yoshihiko Noda

#20. Japan's experience suggests the importance of assessing the sustainability of price stability over a fairly long period, which many central banks have emphasized in recent years.

Toshihiko Fukui

#21. In writing the first edition of Japan's International Relations we aimed to provide a comprehensive analysis of Japan as a normal state, rather than as an aberrant or abnormal state.

Glenn D. Hook

#22. There's a tendency for the yen to strengthen because it's rated highly, but I don't think that accurately reflects Japan's economic performance.

Yoshihiko Noda

#23. Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated - Japan's attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example.

Noam Chomsky

#24. The Japanese Prime Minister has apologized for Japan's part in World War II. However, he still hasn't mentioned anything about karaoke.

David Letterman

#25. They say that Japan's rigorous building codes and regulations saved thousands of lives over there. Or, as Republicans here saw it, it 'fostered a socialist, anti-business environment that's worse than being dead.'

Bill Maher

#26. So, anything that avoids a conflict that could draw in, unhappily again, outside powers such as the United States or revisit, for example, Japan's interests in the Taiwan area would be the last thing that anyone would want.

William Kirby

#27. Despite Japan's desires and efforts, unfortunate differences in the ways that Japan, England, the United States, and China understood circumstances, together with misunderstandings of attitudes, made it impossible for the parties to agree.

Hideki Tojo

#28. The physical impact of taiko music, along with the sheer visual poetry of a choreographed ensemble presenting its music in perfect synchrony, is so powerful and inviting that taiko is beginning to catch on as Japan's most influential and lasting gift to world music.

Gil Asakawa

#29. I would point out that Japan's proposal at the Versailles Peace Conference on the principle of racial equality was rejected by delegates such as those from Britain and the United States.

Hideki Tojo

#30. Japan's beautiful seas and its territory are under threat, and young people are having trouble finding hope in the future amid economic slump. I promise to protect Japan's land and sea, and the lives of the Japanese people no matter what.

Shinzo Abe

#31. The Japanese bureaucracy is unique. It is also very powerful, although it is now the object of so much criticism. Many of Japan's brightest made it a pillar of strength and continuity.

F. Sionil Jose

#32. Japan's biggest problems are conservatism and cowardice.

Tadashi Yanai

#33. Japan cannot conquer China with America in her rear, Soviet Russia on her right and England on her left - her most powerful enemies in the South Sea all flanking her. It is this international situation that constitutes one of Japan's great weaknesses.

Chiang Kai-shek

#34. It seems the best approach for any venture is a combo platter - Japan's quality-consciousness paired with America's willingness to experiment and (sometimes) fail.

Daniel H. Pink

#35. From another point of view, a new situation now seems to be arising in which Japan's prosperity is going to be incorporated into the expanding potential power of both production and consumption in Asia at large.

Kenzaburo Oe

#36. My recent activities have been concentrated on criticism on and actions against Japan's and worldwide plutonium programs, since it is, as I believe, one of the greatest threats to the world ...

Jinzaburo Takagi

#37. The fact is, Japan's whaling is illegal, so just because there is a natural disaster in Japan is no reason for us to stop opposing their illegal activities in the Southern Ocean.

Paul Watson

#38. Although North Korea's position differs (from Tokyo's), Japan's basic stance remains unchanged ? to seek sincere responses from the North Korean side to resolve the abduction and nuclear issues,

Junichiro Koizumi

#39. Follow the road behind the Emperor. We must build the world for Japan's sake, heaven ordered Japan to achieve this great mission.

Kingoro Hashimoto

#40. The constitution has thus ended up not as Japan's ultimate governing legal document, but in the grand political Japanese tradition as a somewhat blurred and compromised token of legitimacy, hoisted about erratically like a portable shrine by competing contenders for power.

R. Taggart Murphy

#41. During the 1980s, when Japan's economy was roaring and people were writing books with titles like 'Japan is Number One,' most Japanese college students didn't make the effort to become fluent in English.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#42. Nevertheless, China was unfortunately unable to understand Japan's real position, and it is greatly to be regretted that the Sino-Japanese War became one of long duration.

Hideki Tojo

#43. I will aim to restore the Japan-U.S. alliance and Japan's strong diplomatic capabilities. Japan can't pursue a strong foreign policy without strengthening its alliance with the United States.

Shinzo Abe

#44. In Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata, the first of Japan's two Nobel laureates, describes the sad and sorry love affair of a geisha from the country and an intellectual from the city. It's

Nancy Pearl

#45. New Zealand totally rejects Japan's proposals to double the number of whales slaughtered in the Southern Ocean

Chris Carter

#46. The future of Japan's economic growth depends on us having the willpower and the courage to sail without hesitation onto the rough seas of global competition.

Shinzo Abe

#47. Haven't we put off problems without clarifying Japan's will to protect the lives and assets of its people and territory with its own hands, and merely accepted the benefits of economic prosperity?

Shinzo Abe

#48. A reminder (Japan's earthquake and tsunami) how flimsy our sophisticated modern world really is

George Alagiah

#49. Let the League of Nations say whatever it pleases, let America offer whatever interference, let China decry Japan's action at the top of her voice, but Japan must adhere to her course unswervingly.

Sadao Araki

#50. Japan's inexplicable lack of response to even consider a move to re-open their market to U.S. beef will sorely tempt economic trade action against Japan.

Saxby Chambliss

#51. The war has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage.

Hirohito

#52. 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

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

Nick Cave

#54. 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

#55. 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

#56. 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

#57. 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

#58. 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

#59. 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

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

Aphex Twin

#61. 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

#62. 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

#63. 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

#64. 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

#65. 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

#66. 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

#67. 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

#68. 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

#69. 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

#70. 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

#71. 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

#72. 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

#73. 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

#74. 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

#75. 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

#76. 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

#77. 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

#78. 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

#79. 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

#80. 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

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

Robert Paul Weston

#82. 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

#83. 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

#84. 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

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

Tommy Yune

#86. 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

#87. 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

#88. 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

#89. 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

#90. 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

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

Carine Roitfeld

#92. 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

#93. 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

#94. 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

#95. 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

#96. 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

#97. 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

#98. 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

#99. 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

#100. 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