“Japan is probably the best... example of the abandonment of an ancient and nature-oriented ethos for the spirit of progress, Western style.”

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

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

“Instead of Orientals being the passive objects of the Western gaze, we must study the West. The way Orientals saw it must be a subject for deep investigation. Occidentalism is the other side of Orientalism”

“The Orient and Islam have a kind of extrareal, phenomenologically reduced status that puts them out of reach of everyone except the Western expert. From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing the orient could not do was to represent itself. Evidence of the Orient was credible only after it had passed through and been made firm by the refining fire of the Orientalist’s work.”

“Finding a master of the dark art of ninjutsu in modern westernized Japan seems as unlikely as finding an active practitioner of the magic of Merlin in contemporary industrialized England.”