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Japanese Culture Quotes

Browse 80 quotes about Japanese Culture.

Japanese Culture Quotes

“Arosteguy poured more sake for both of them. "I love warm sake. How brilliant to create a drink at body temperature." He shook his head. "The Japanese. Feared by the West for so long, and now fading into their beloved sunrise. Or sunset. First militarily, then economically, and now, only gastronomically. And I need to become Japanese at a time when everyone wants to become Chinese. The Chinese call the Japanese 'the little people,' I've been told. That could have to do with the miniaturization of island species. I must do a study.”

SakeJapanese Culture
Book:Consumed
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“Chikako and Ben's lives are inexorably linked linked to an ever-expanding list of seasonal tasks. In summer, they work through the garden bounty, drying and pickling the fruits and vegetables at peak ripeness. Fall brings chestnuts to pick, chili paste to make, mushrooms to hunt. Come winter, Noto's seas are flush with the finest sea creatures, which means pickling fish for hinezushi and salting squid guts for ishiri. In the spring, after picking mountain vegetables and harvesting seaweed, they plant the garden and begin the cycle that will feed them, their family, and their guests in the year ahead.”

TasksGardeningFruits And VegetablesJapanese CultureHarvestingSeasonalForagingNoto
Book:Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture
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“There was always an unspoken expectation that I would return one day and follow in my father's footsteps as an imperial guard. My mother grew ill, forcing my father into early retirement. I did my duty." "That seems unfair." He huffs out a breath. "It feels unfair. But my parents were older when they had me. You know, the last remnants of a postwar generation, brought up to value sacrifice, discipline, and duty." "Whoa. Gimu. Peak Japanese." Japanese language is subtly nuanced. There is a myriad of words to describe duty, and among them is the gimu----a lifelong obligation to family or country.”

Japanese CultureObligatedDuty And Family
Book:Tokyo Ever After
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“The first one is red bean rice ball. Red beans and sticky rice were often steamed together to create red bean rice on celebratory occasions. It was considered to be a feast in the olden days. Many areas in Japan still carry on the tradition of making red bean rice whenever there is something to celebrate. In that sense, I think you can say red bean rice is deeply rooted in the Japanese soul." "That's right. I made red bean rice along with other foods when the framework of my house was completed." "It feels very festive for some reason." "I like the salt and sesame seasoning on it." "The next is a hijiki rice ball. You cook the rice together with the hijiki, thin fried tofu and carrots... ...flavor it with soy sauce and make a rice ball with it. The hijiki rice is the typical Japanese commoners' food that mixes riches from the sea and the soil together. A rice ball made of hijiki rice is one of the original Japanese foods with a long continuing history." "Aaah. This brings back memories." "It makes us realize that we're Japanese. It's a flavor we must not lose." "The last rice ball of the past is dried seaweed. Dried seaweed is one of the most familiar seaweeds to the Japanese, apart from konbu, wakame and hijiki. And the way to fully enjoy the taste of the dried seaweed... ... is to make seaweed tsukudani and use that as the filling for the rice ball. For the tsukudani, you simmer top-quality dried seaweed in sake and soy sauce. Once you learn its taste, you will never be satisfied with eating the dried seaweed tsukudani that's commercially available." "It tastes nothing like that one we can buy at the market." "It's refreshing, yet has a very strong scent of seaweed." "It's interesting to see the difference in flavor of the tsukudani filling and the seaweed wrapping the rice ball." "Red bean rice, hijiki rice and dried seaweed tsukudani rice balls... These are flavors that will never fade away as long as the Japanese are around.”

PastTraditionalSeaweedJapanese CultureAlgaeJapanese CookingRice BallsRed Beans And Rice
Book:The Joy of Rice
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“These rice balls represent the responsibilities we have for the future." "The responsibilities we have for the future?!" "Let's start off with the stewed hard clams. In the past, they could be found anywhere. But nowadays, most of the hard clams are being imported because they can no longer be caught due to land reclamation and pollution. Hard clams from the sea nearby have now become a rarity. Stewed hard clams are an important cultural asset that has been passed down to us since the Edo Period. But at this rate, the hard clams will be lost, and the stewed hard clams will disappear from the menu of the future. The same with matsutake. The production of matsutake is going down every year because the mountains are not looked after with care. People hardly go to the mountains to take care of them because of the decrease in population in the mountainous regions, as well as the decrease of people who use wood as fuel. At this rate, domestic matsutake will also disappear from our tables. And then there's the katsuobushi. How many households have their own katsuobushi shaver these days? MSG and ready-made easy seasonings have become the mainstream of cooking. The most basic Japanese tradition of using katsuobushi and konbu to make dashi is starting to disappear. Even when you use katsuobushi, you use something that has already been shaved and packed." "He's right. Young people who have experienced shaving a katsuobushi are a minority nowadays." "In the old days, shaving the katsuobushi was the children's job." "The current Japanese culinary culture is one of the richest in the world. But at the same time, we are continuing to lose something we are not meant to lose. And that is not right . It is our responsibility to pass on the important cultural elements from our ancestors down to the future.”

FutureJapaneseTraditionsJapanese CultureResponsibilitiesEnvironmental ValuesRice Balls
Book:The Joy of Rice
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“For some reason I have become terribly serious since arriving here,” Sōseki wrote, in his “Letter from London,” a year after his arrival in England. “Looking and listening to everything around me, I think incessantly of the problem of ‘Japan’s future.’” Its future, then as now, involves trying to make a peace, or form a synthesis, between the ancient Chinese ideal of sitting still and watching the seasons pass, tending to social harmonies, and the new American way of pushing forward individually , convinced that tomorrow will be better than today.”

Japanese CultureNatsume Soseki
Book:The Gate
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“Instead of pressuring the Japanese into lowering trade barriers or taking a greater share of the responsibility for their own defense, we should be urging them to bring their verbs from the ends of their sentences into second place, right after their subjects, where they belong.”

HumorLanguageHumorousGrammarJapanese CultureGrammar Book
Book:Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell You
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“A very enjoyable meditation on the curious thing called 'Zen' -not the Japanese religious tradition but rather the Western clich of Zen that is embraced in advertising, self-help books, and much more. . . . Yamada, who is both a scholar of Buddhism and a student of archery, offers refreshing insight into Western stereotypes of Japan and Japanese culture, and how these are received in Japan.”

BookSelfHelpingCultureReligiousMeditationSelf HelpStudentsBuddhismOffersTraditionWesternInsightAdvertisingCuriousJapanScholarStereotypeEnjoyableRefreshingReligious TraditionsJapanese CultureArcherySelf Help BooksHelp Book
Author:Alexander Gardner
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“As well as Japanese animation, technology has a huge influence on Japanese society, and also Japanese novels. It's because before, people tended to think that ideology or religion were the things that actually changed people, but it's been proven that that's not the case. Technology has been proven to be the thing that's actually changing people. So in that sense, it's become a theme in Japanese culture.”

PeopleThinkingWellsHas BeensCultureCasesTechnologyNovelInfluenceChangedHugeIdeologyThemeProvenAnimationJapanese CultureJapanese Animation
Author:Mamoru Oshii
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“Playing Japanese characters and being in environments that are Japanese, like a character's apartment or whatever, if you have directors or art directors who just don't know what' s what with Japanese culture, then pretty soon something's just passed through. I've been through many times where I've pointed out the incorrectness of so much of what's been done to a set.”

IfsKnowsArtDoneCharacterCultureEnvironmentDirectorsApartmentJapanese CultureArt Director
Author:Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa
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“Judo has been part of Japanese culture for a long time. It makes sense to me that this sport, which is both athletic and philosophical, was created in Japan. It is based on respect for the partner and for our elders as our teachers, which is very important and makes a strong, positive contribution to human relationships, and not only in sports. I am happy that life brought me to this wonderful sport as a child. It is like my first love.”

FirstsHumansChildrenLongHas BeensImportantCultureStrongSportsTeacherWonderfulLong TimePhilosophicalPartnersMake SenseContributionJapanFirst LoveEldersAthleticHuman RelationsHuman RelationshipsJudoJapanese Culture
Author:Vladimir Putin
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