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

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.

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.

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.

Though the body is itsgenesis, a poem is the vision of a processCarved in space, vision your poor eye's singlearmor against winter spring summer fall

Never in my wildest dreams did I entertain the idea that I would become a fashion designer.

If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a 'peace conference', you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and airplanes.

Repeat after me: 'I am doing the best that I can.' That's the mantra I keep trying to tell myself, 'I'm doing the best I can.'

There's no such thing as a standard size movie star, or woman for that matter.

A serious illness or a death advertises the doctor exactly as a hanging advertises the barrister who defended the person hanged.

Our show is about starting over.

I don't like pop music.

I'm very honoured that there is a loyal following and I hope it continues

I don't mean this, but I'm going to say it anyway. I don't really think of pop art and serious art as being that far apart.