#japanese

The story of Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Tres was both simple and complicated. Simple in that things never change: people consistently jealous or secretive or brave-hearted. As for the rest, it all came down to a series of misunderstandings, the type that could happen to anyone, really. You assume that the sushi bucket is full of gold coins, but instead it's got Kokingo's head in it. You think you know everything about your faithful follower, but it turns out that he's actually an orphaned fox who can change his shape at will. It was he who spoke my favorite line of the evening, five words that perfectly conveyed just how enchanting and full of surprises this Kabuki play really is: 'That drum is my father. ↗

— David Sedaris

#japanese-mythology #kabuki #plays #wtf #change

I'll make you so in love with me, that everytime our lips touch, you'll die a little death. ↗

— Ai Yazawa

#japanese #manga #death

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations—there you will find the essence of true art, religion, and science. ↗

— Santoka Taneda

#creating #haiku #japanese #poetry #zen

I can only bow to the will of the heaven, but not to the will of these men. ↗

— Eiji Yoshikawa

#taira-no-kiyomori #the-heike-story #men

I've got lots of weird illustrations of me from Japanese fans. ↗

— Jamie Bell

#got #i #illustrations #japanese #lots

I think that the Japanese culture is one of the very few cultures left that is its own entity. They're just so traditional and so specific in their ways. It's kind of untouched, it's not Americanized. ↗

— Toni Collette

#culture #cultures #entity #few #i

The ancient bond between the tsarist state and Russian nationalism could be used to create powerful emotions when the enemy came from the heathen east. The Mongol invasion had left a powerful mark on the Russian psyche. It was expressed in a deep anxiety about the mixed Eurasian roots of the people and it's culture, which made it easy for an educated liberal to convince themselves that this war was nothing less than a defense of Russia's European identity against the Asian hordes. ↗

— Orlando Figes

#education

In the Second World War, they're talking about the Japanese traitors and putting them into concentration camps. But companies like DuPont had factories in Germany turning out stuff for the German Army. ↗

— Rob Walton

#army #camps #companies #concentration #dupont

The young Japanese, especially, love to wear the latest thing and when they come to London they head for my shops as part of what they want to find in Britain. ↗

— Vivienne Westwood

#come #especially #find #head #japanese

If we don't do it, somebody else will. The Chinese, the Europeans and the Japanese all have the goal of going to the moon. Certainly we don't want to wake up and see that they have a base there before we do. ↗

— Bart Gordon

#before #certainly #chinese #else #europeans