80 Inspiring Quotes About Japan

Japan, a nation where ancient traditions seamlessly blend with cutting-edge modernity, has long inspired people worldwide through its unique culture, art, and philosophies. From the breathtaking beauty of cherry blossoms in spring to the serene landscapes depicted in Japanese art, there's much to admire and learn from Japan's rich heritage. In this collection, we've gathered 80 inspiring quotes that capture the essence of this captivating country, offering insights from both historical figures and contemporary voices. Whether you're a seasoned traveler, a student of culture, or simply intrigued by the wonders of Japan, these quotes will transport you to the heart of the Land of the Rising Sun, where inspiration knows no bounds.

1. “What a strange thing!to be alivebeneath cherry blossoms.” - Kobayashi Issa

2. “...I was not prepared for the feel of the noodles in my mouth, or the purity of the taste. I had been in Japan for almost a month, but I had never experiences anything like this. The noodles quivered as if they were alive, and leapt into my mouth where they vibrated as if playing inaudible music.” - Ruth Reichl

3. “I've never really wanted to go to Japan. Simply because I don’t like eating fish. And I know that's very popular out there in Africa.” - Britney Spears

4. “I was on one of my world 'walkabouts.' It had taken me once more through Hong Kong, to Japan, Australia, and then Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific [one of the places I grew up]. There I found the picture of 'the Father.' It was a real, gigantic Saltwater Crocodile (whose picture is now featured on page 1 of TEETH). From that moment, 'the Father' began to swim through the murky recesses of my mind. Imagine! I thought, men confronting the world’s largest reptile on its own turf! And what if they were stripped of their firearms, so they must face this force of nature with nothing but hand weapons and wits?We know that neither whales nor sharks hunt individual humans for weeks on end. But, Dear Reader, crocodiles do! They are intelligent predators that choose their victims and plot their attacks. So, lost on its river, how would our heroes escape a great hunter of the Father’s magnitude? And what if these modern men must also confront the headhunters and cannibals who truly roam New Guinea? What of tribal wars, the coming of Christianity and materialism (the phenomenon known as the 'Cargo Cult'), and the people’s introduction to 'civilization' in the form of world war? What of first contact between pristine tribal culture and the outside world? What about tribal clashes on a global scale—the hatred and enmity between America and Japan, from Pearl Harbor, to the only use in history of atomic weapons? And if the world could find peace at last, how about Johnny and Katsu?” - Timothy James Dean

5. “Oh I'm sure you're right," Auntie said. "Probably she's just as you say. But she looks to me like a very clever girl, and adaptable; you can see that from the shape of her ears.” - Arthur Golden

6. “Japan likewise put her hopes of victory on a different basis from that prevalent in the United States. (...) Even when she was winning, her civilian statesmen, her High Command, and her soldiers repeated that this was no contest between armaments; it was pitting of our faith in things against their faith in spirit.” - Ruth Benedict

7. “Many Buddhist temple priests regard their parishioners as possessions and fear their departure as a diminishing of assets.” - Kentetsu Takamori

8. “Some nonreligious people are disgruntled by the word "faith," feeling that it has no connection to them. But we all have faith. Broadly speaking, "faith" does not apply only to belief in the supernatural. We have faith in our life, for example, believing we will live to see tomorrow, or in our health, believing we have years of healthy life ahead of us. Husbands and wives, parents and children have faith in one another.” - Kentetsu Takamori

9. “Living in a world such as this is like dancing on a live volcano.” - Kentetsu Takamori

10. “Of course, my Christmas is (so much more) gorgeous and romantic (than Germany's)!! And unlike the rest of the world, we leave wine behind for Santa Claus!""So Santa-san is delivering gifts to children while driving under the influence . . . ?” - Hidekaz Himaruya

11. “Why has pachinko swept Japan? It can hardly be the excitement of gambling, since the risks and rewards are so small. During the hours spent in front of a pachinko machine, there is an almost total lack of stimulation other than the occasional rush of ball bearings. There is no thought, no movement; you have no control over the flow of balls, apart from holding a little lever which shoots them up to the top of the machine; you sit there enveloped in a cloud of heavy cigarette smoke, semi-dazed by the racket of millions of ball bearings falling through machines around you. Pachinko verges on sensory deprivation. It is the ultimate mental numbing, the final victory of the educational system." - Lost Japan, Eng. vers., 1996” - Alex Kerr

12. “By almost every account he's a fine young man. I'm simply trying to figure out why I should care that he's three centimeters taller than he was in May.” - John Burnham Schwartz

13. “Even in former days, Korea was known as the 'hermit kingdom' for its stubborn resistance to outsiders. And if you wanted to create a totally isolated and hermetic society, northern Korea in the years after the 1953 'armistice' would have been the place to start. It was bounded on two sides by the sea, and to the south by the impregnable and uncrossable DMZ, which divided it from South Korea. Its northern frontier consisted of a long stretch of China and a short stretch of Siberia; in other words its only contiguous neighbors were Mao and Stalin. (The next-nearest neighbor was Japan, historic enemy of the Koreans and the cruel colonial occupier until 1945.) Add to that the fact that almost every work of man had been reduced to shards by the Korean War. Air-force general Curtis LeMay later boasted that 'we burned down every town in North Korea,' and that he grounded his bombers only when there were no more targets to hit anywhere north of the 38th parallel. Pyongyang was an ashen moonscape. It was Year Zero. Kim Il Sung could create a laboratory, with controlled conditions, where he alone would be the engineer of the human soul.” - Christopher Hitchens

14. “Yet for the first time in three days, I want something. I want the forest lord to turn me into a cedar. The very oldest islanders say that if you are in the interior mountains on the night when the forest lord counts his trees, he includes you in the number and turns you into a tree.” - David Mitchell

15. “Every once in a while she'll get worked up and cry like that. But that's ok. She's letting her feelings out. The scary thing is not being able to do that. Then your feelings build up and harden and die inside. That's when you're in big trouble.” - Haruki Murakami

16. “Count Ayakura’s abstraction persisted. He believed that only a vulgar mentality was willing to acknowledge the possibility of catastrophe. He felt that taking naps was much more beneficial than confronting catastrophes. However precipitous the future might seem, he learned from the game of kemari that the ball must always come down. There was no call for consternation. Grief and rage, along with other outbursts of passion, were mistakes easily committed by a mind lacking in refinement. And the Count was certainly not a man who lacked refinement.Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura’s version of political theory.” - Yukio Mishima

17. “The only other white people we saw during the three days we stayed there were a German couple intent on taking pictures of their stuffed sheep in a variety of locations around the world.” - Tynan

18. “When he adopted Western methods, it was in a purely utilitarian spirit. He gave no thought to the principles on which our civilisation is based. It was the finished product he was after and not the process.” - Homer B. Hulbert

19. “The rain that fell on the city runs down the dark gutters and empties into the sea without even soaking the ground” - Haruki Murakami

20. “Thingschanging, failing apart, fading, another year, a few moremoves, a hard person who doesn't give a fuck, a boredom somonumental it humbles, arrangements so fleeting made bypeople you don't even know that it requires you to lose anysense of reality you might have once acquired, expectationsso unreasonable you become superstitious about evermatching them.” - Bret Easton Ellis

21. “There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.” - John Hersey

22. “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

23. “Purification in Shinto lifts the burden from the shoulders of the individual and washes it away.” - Stuart D. B. Picken

24. “Shigemori's body of work is a compelling manifesto for continuous cultural renewal.” - Christian Tschumi

25. “Japan is the first nation in the world to accord 'comic books'--originally a 'humorous' form of entertainment mainly for young people--nearly the same social status as novels and films.” - frederik l. schodt

26. “You`ll wondering why aren`t you born in Japan if you think you`re an Otaku” - Otaku Quotes

27. “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

28. “He felt so lost, he said later, that the familiar studio felt like a haunted valley deep in the mountains, with the smell of rotting leaves, the spray of a waterfall, the sour fumes of fruit stashed away by a monkey; even the dim glow of the master's oil lamp on its tripod looked to him like misty moonlight in the hills.” - Ryunosuke Akutagawa

29. “People used to say that on moonless nights Her Ladyship's broad-skirted scarlet trousers would glide eerily along the outdoor corridor, never touching the floor.” - Ryunosuke Akutagawa

30. “He was said to have survived starvation by eating human flesh, after which he had the strength to tear out the antlers of a living stag with his bare hands.” - Ryunosuke Akutagawa

31. “Still more horrible was the color of the flames that licked the latticed cabin vents before shooting skyward, as though - might I say? - the sun itself had crashed to earth, spewing its heavenly fire in all directions.” - Ryunosuke Akutagawa

32. “I could have sworn that the man's eyes were no longer watching his daughter dying in agony, that instead the gorgeous colors of flames and the sight of a woman suffering in them were giving him joy beyond measure.” - Ryunosuke Akutagawa

33. “I bow my head submissively and see that my chest is heaving, already dotted with the telltale flush of sexual arousal.” - Donna George Storey

34. “You know Americans...Self-improvement. No matter who or what we are, we're always working on ways to become somebody else.” - Alan Brown

35. “The Professor noted two nymphs with strawberries on their heads, a DayGlo Amish lady, a mustachioed man in a rainbow apron. He wrote Saturday Night Fever, then crossed it out and wrote Drag Ball + Bollywood and underlined it twice.” - La Carmina

36. “Insta-love isn’t something that happens in real life. Ithappens in the books I read, but not in the world I live. Though herestands this beautiful, sexy, funny, sweet and amazing guy who hasdone everything short of professing love at first sight to me and I’mstill standing here like a pair of lungs suffocating, needing him inorder to breathe.” - Kathryn Vance-Perez

37. “Peace is not just a desired state of being for people, but also enables the flourishing of nature as well as human-created landscapes.” - Norris Brock Johnson

38. “The peace within and flowing from sacred spaces and architecture places is clothed in forgiveness, renunciation, and reconciliation.” - Norris Brock Johnson

39. “For the casual viewer, Kurosawa’s films can be an exercise in endurance.” - Jerry White

40. “Even if there are no new Mighty Atom manga or films created, the Mighty Atom character has become a permanent fixture of both Japanese and global pop culture.” - frederik l. schodt

41. “Gift giving is part of the culture no matter where you are and no matter how long you stay.” - Christalyn Brannen

42. “Out of the ugliness of the ironworks lepers will eat, children will be born, their parents will grow old.” - Helen McCarthy

43. “Kon’s films present a fractured, multifaceted world in which everyone has their own different reality.” - Andrew Osmond

44. “Luna Sea’s music moves quickly but intelligibly, with a darkly frenetic, creative energy.” - Josephine Yun

45. “When a zashiki warashi came to live with you, good fortune smiled upon the whole house.” - Holly Thompson

46. “One warm morning in July, a ghost came to our breakfast table.” - Holly Thompson

47. “As much as any contemporary writer, Murakami grasps the bewildering fluidity of commoditized life.” - The Japan Foundation

48. “Poverty and loneliness could be seen as a liberation from strivings to become rich and popular.” - Donald Richie

49. “Japan never considers time together as time wasted. Rather, it is time invested.” - Donald Richie

50. “Tokyo is a very safe city. At night it becomes quiet the way New York never does.” - Rick Kennedy

51. “To the woman in the restaurant today, the doll in her arms was the real child who still lived in her memories.” - Shogo Oketani

52. “While the characters drive the epic story of Robotech, it’s the robotic mecha that capture the imagination.” - Tommy Yune

53. “In Japanese swordsmanship, it is not uncommon to speak of a unity of mind, body, and sword.” - H.E. Davey

54. “In spite of what most assume, it is surprisingly tough to make the mind and body work together as a unit.” - H.E. Davey

55. “Comics are drawings, not photographs, and as such they present a subjective view of reality.” - frederik l. schodt

56. “I’m very headstrong. Once I’ve caught fire, there’s no dousing the flames—all engines full speed ahead.” - Adachi Zenko

57. “The secret to making yourself stronger is to absorb the strength of the people around you—energy begets energy.” - Adachi Zenko

58. “One very good way to invite stares of disapproval in Japan is to walk and eat at the same time.” - Andrew Horvat

59. “The new fans of Japan won’t be Orientalists, but they will be anime-savvy.” - Morinosuke Kawaguchi

60. “Japanese had never seen a Western-style circus, and most of them had probably never seen foreigners, either.” - frederik l. schodt

61. “The pond garden is an intricate phenomenon coalescing the intent and will of various people of influence living at various times.” - Norris Brock Johnson

62. “In pursuing a ‘way,’ Japanese typically move beyond an interest in craftsmanship to a kind of sacred search for the ultimate.” - Morinosuke Kawaguchi

63. “Girly’ products can spur Japan’s growth in this century every bit as much as, if not more than, the ‘manly’ technologies.” - Morinosuke Kawaguchi

64. “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

65. “In most collectivist cultures, direct confrontation of another person is considered rude and undesirable. The word no is seldom used, because saying “no” is a confrontation; “you may be right” and “we will think about it” are examples of polite ways of turning down a request. In the same vein, the word yes should not necessarily be inferred as an approval, since it is used to maintain the line of communication: “yes, I heard you” is the meaning it has in Japan.” - Geert Hofstede

66. “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

67. “Lady #1, Maki, had never once given any thought to what was really right for her in her life, simply believing that if she surrounded herself with super-exclusive things, she'd become a super-exclusive person.” - Ryu Murakami

68. “They needed a reason why a little kid would commit murder, someone or something to point the finger at, and I think they were relieved when they hit upon horror movies as the culprit. But there's no reason a child commits murder, just as there's no reason a child gets lost. What would it be - because his parents weren't watching him? That's not a reason, it's just a step in the process.” - Ryu Murakami

69. “From the way of Go the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation.” - Yasunari Kawabata

70. “They have taken the idea of nonharming, of gentleness toward the earth, to a very radical level. Even the weeds are not enemies.” - Andy Couturier

71. “Why is it that so many people start to value money so much that they trade in most of the hours and years of their life in order to get it?” - Andy Couturier

72. “What art should do, I think, is advance the generation into the next era. It should be one step ahead of the ordinary, ahead of what is already known. Art is what pulls on the next age. I’m not saying that my art is that, but that it would be good if it could be.” - Andy Couturier

73. “I thought I should make a place to bring light down into this world. All things that become realities start in that place of someone imagining them.” - Andy Couturier

74. “My goal is to draw a line with some 'flavor' to it.” - Andy Couturier

75. “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

76. “Sometimes just to touch the ground is enough for me, even if not a single thing grows from what I plant.” - Andy Couturier

77. “If you don't have a whole lot of unsatisfied people, the economy stops dead, doesn't it?” - Andy Couturier

78. “I finally understood that I couldn’t avoid working to provide for myself, but that can also be a wonderfulthing, a beautiful thing.” - Andy Couturier

79. “When I got home, I took a bat and examined my back in detail in the bathroom mirror. This tattoo would be for myself and no-one else. It wasn’t just because I was about to end my relationship with Iro, it was because I wanted to make some serious changes deep down inside me… My torso - my back and front – and my shoulders, breasts, and upper arms were decorated with a vibrantly coloured work of art. I knew it had been the right thing to do… When I looked at that beautifully crafted tattoo, I was filled with a sense of total contentment I had never experienced before. I felt as though I had been set free.” - Shoko Tendo

80. “I loved the quiet places in Kyoto, the places that held the world within a windless moment. Inside the temples, Nature held her breath. All longing was put to sleep in the stillness, and all was distilled into a clean simplicity.The smell of woodsmoke, the drift of incense; a procession of monks in black-and-gold robes, one of them giggling in a voice yet unbroken; a touch of autumn in the air, a sense of gathering rain.” - Pico Iyer