“Yasunari Kawabata, the Japanese Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1968, committed suicide in 1971. Two years earlier, in 1969, another great Japanese novelist, Yukio Mishima, ended his life in the same way. Since 1895 ,thirteen Japanese novelists and writers have committed suicide, including the author of the Rashomon, Ryunosuko Akutagawa, in 1927. That "continuous tragedy" of Japanese culture during 70 years coincides with the penetration of Western civilization and materialistic ideas into the traditional culture of Japan. Whatever it be, for the poets and the writers of tragedies, civilization will always have an inhuman face and be a threat to humanity. A year before his death, Kawabata wrote "men are separated from each other by a concrete wall that obstructs any circulation of love. Nature is smothered in the name of progress." In the novel The Snow Country, published in 1937 , Kawabata places man's loneliness and alienation in the modern world at the very focus of his reflections.”

“I have no idea what to say next. I don't speak Japanese, I don't know anything about Japanese business or Japanese culture. Apart from sushi. But I can't exactly go up to him and say "Sushi!" out of the blue. It would be like going up to a top American businessman and saying "T-bone steak!”

“Behind this lies not just impact or drama, but a typically Japanese tendency. The story of Pygmalion, the Greek myth — in which Pygmalion falls in love with the statue of a young woman that he creates and which is hen transformed into a human by Aphrodite who imbues it with life — represents a Western approach in which the statue represents the human body. In Japan, however, there is a unique predilection for dolls ... This can be interpreted as a decadent, necrophiliac erotic story but it can also be interpreted as a propensity for Japanese men to fall in love with figures. These men's desires are directed at the figure for the very reason that it is a doll. The overwhelming passivity of the doll is a reflection of the behavior of a certain type of Japanese man whose immaturity makes it very difficult for him to establish an equal relationship with a mature woman.”

“Nathaniel, who has failed as a writer, decides to commit suicide. He loads his revolver, places it at his side on his desk, and starts to write his letter of farewell. The letter lengthens, brightens, breathes, lives. It is the Masterpiece, the yearned-for Masterpiece! In order to publish it, Nathaniel does not commit suicide.”

“Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.”

“I don't speak Japanese, I don't know anything about Japanese business or Japanese culture. Apart from sushi. But I can't exactly go up to him and say "Sushi!" out of the blue. It would be like going up to a top American businessman and saying, "T-bone steak!”