journalists-from-japan

"Until now I had mistaken the "Enlightenment” of Zen: I was wrong to think it meant being able to die serenely under any conditions. It means being able to live serenely under any conditions."

"Take your materials from what is around you—if you see a dandelion, write about it; if it’s misty, write about the mist. The materials for poetry are all about you in profusion."

"柿くへば 鐘が鳴るなり 法隆寺 kaki kueba kane ga naru nari Hōryūji"

"Tell them I was a persimmon eater who liked haiku"

"... the sparrow’s chirp, the crow’s caw, the willow’s green, the cherry blossom’s pink, are the truth of the Zen master and the essence of Basho's style."

"In this jumbled world of ten thousand things, there are things that are beautiful, things that are ugly, and things that combine beauty and ugliness. However, if we attend to beauty, we can find almost nothing that completely lacks it. The ugly face of the puffer fish bears a slight trace of beauty within its ugliness. Sea cucumbers possess an unintelligible form, but even in this unintelligible form, we catch a glimpse of beauty. People despise the creepy appearance of hairy caterpillars and snakes, yet an honest look may reveal something appealing about them. But of all these subjects, the most extreme example must be shit. Among countless books on aesthetics, probably not a single one expounds on its beauty. There are voluminous Western and Chinese poems, but in our experience, we have never run into a poem about shit. Probably such a poem does not exist even in books of which we are not aware. If this is the case, then we might regard shit as entirely unsuitable for poetry; but, curiously, there are many poems about shit in haiku."

"Haiku in particular allows poets to depict the insignificant things that other poetic forms cannot, given the natural tendency of a haiku poet’s observations to encompass every inch of the world. Taken to the extreme, the haiku poet cannot dismiss even excrement."

"In his later, bedridden years his observations were limited almost entirely to his sickroom and the small garden that adjoined it, yet he continued until the very end to draw artistic inspiration from the few flowers, plants, and other objects that were within his field of vision. Or he wrote about the foods he enjoyed, particularly such fruits as persimmons, since eating was one of the few physical pleasures that his ailment had not deprived him of."

"I think I have made it clear that I never intended to make enemies. But in an age when anti-foreign sentiment was running high, it was unavoidable that in my position as an advocate of open intercourse and free adoption of Western culture, I should make some adversaries."

"It is said that heaven does not create one man above or below another man. Any existing distinction between the wise and the stupid, between the rich and the poor, comes down to a matter of education."

"The world is large."

"To recount the history of assassination since the beginning of our foreign intercourse — in the beginning, people simply hated the foreigners because all foreigners were "impure" men who should not be permitted to tread the sacred soil of Japan... As I have said before, I felt my life in greatest danger during the twelve or thirteen years around the period of the [Meiji] Restoration."

"Each individual man and each individual country, according to the principles of natural reason, is free from bondage. Consequently, if there is some threat that might infringe upon a country’s freedom, then that country should not hesitate even to take up arms against all the countries of the world."

"In its broad sense, civilization means not only comfort in daily necessities but also the refining of knowledge and the cultivation of virtue so as to elevate human life to a higher plane... It refers to the attainment of both material well-being and the elevation of the human spirit, [but] since what produces man’s well-being and refinement is knowledge and virtue, civilization ultimately means the progress of man’s knowledge and virtue."

"Moreover, the argument for national polity, for Christianity, and for Confucianism... are also insufficient to bolster people’s hearts. What, then, will? I say there is one thing: namely, to establish our goal and advance toward civilization... The way in which to preserve this independence cannot be sought anywhere except in civilization."

"Robbery and murder are the worst of human crimes; but in the West there are robbers and murderers. There are those who form cliques to vie for the reins of power and who, when deprived of that power, decry the injustice of it all. Even worse, international diplomacy is really based on the art of deception. Surveying the situation as a whole, all we can say is that there is a general prevalence of good over bad, but we can hardly call the situation perfect. When, several thousand years hence, the levels of knowledge and virtue of the peoples of the world will have made great progress (to the point of becoming utopian), the present condition of the nations of the West will surely seem a pitifully primitive stage. Seen in this light, civilization is an open-ended process. We cannot be satisfied with the present level of attainment of the West."

"Once the wind of Western civilization blows to the East, every blade of grass and every tree in the East follow what the Western wind brings... We do not have time to wait for the en­lightenment of our neighbors so that we can work together toward the development of Asia. It is better for us to leave the ranks of Asian na­tions and cast our lot with civilized nations of the West... We should deal with them exactly as the Westerners do."

"Therefore, to teach them [women] at least an outline of economics and law is the first requirement after giving them a general education. Figuratively speaking, it will be like providing the women of civilized society with a pocket dagger for self-protection."

"Whatever happens in the country, whatever warfare harasses our land, we will never relinquish our hold on Western learning. As long as this school of ours stands, Japan remains a civilized nation of the world."