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.

My observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity.

The ambiguous orientation of Japan drove the country into the position of an invader in Asia.

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.

It is the second job of literature to create myth. But its first job is to destroy it.

There's no better reading experience than going to the place where a text was written.

The ideal teacher student relationship exists when the student is better than the teacher.

To be upright and to have an imagination: that is enough to be a very good young man.

However, please allow me to say that the fundamental style of my writing has been to start from my personal matters and then to link it up with society, the state and the world.

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

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

The future is just wasted on some people.

Those who write are writers. Those who wait are waiters.

Stones and sticks are thrown only at fruit-bearing trees.

My strength was that I am more balanced and calmer than most other riders.

A bad man can do a million times more harm than a beast.

Fight tautness whenever it occurs; strive for relaxed muscles throughout.

A nation that encourages its people to spend more and save less promotes economic backwardness, social decay and its own financial doom.

Entrepreneurs: The only people who work 80 hour weeks to avoid working 40 hour weeks.

One thing at a time, is my motto - and just play that thing for all it is worth, even if it's only tto pair and a jack.