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

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.

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.

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.

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

Design, refine and repeat, and keep learning all the way along. It sounds bland and pedestrian, but in fact, it's the reverse.

If I were trapped in one city and had to eat one nation's cuisine for the rest of my life, I would not mind eating Japanese. I adore Japanese food. I love it.

You, the foreign media, have been the companion of my people in its long and painful journey to freedom.

To live - is that not enough?

I don't like to sit and count my money and be a "happy entrepreneur".

You can hear rumors. But you can't know them.

Our hope is that a new manager, along with roster improvements, will restore a winning culture.

The only way of finding a solution is to fight back, to move, to run, and to control that pressure.

Faith, consciousness, and awareness all exist beyond the thinking mind.