Status Updates From مشرق‌زمین: گاهواره تمدن

There is no more amazing or portentous phenomenon in modern history than the way in which sleeping Japan, roughly awakened by the cannon of the West, leaped to the lesson, bettered the instruction, accepted science, industry and war, defeated all her competitors either in battle or in trade, and became, within two generations, the most aggressive nation in the contemporary world.

به عقيده مونتنى اينكه به بهانه دين و پرهيزگاری كسى را تا به حد مرگ عذاب و شكنجه كنند - همچنانكه در زمان او مرسوم بود -بسيار وحشيانه تر از آن است كه او را بعد از مرگ بپزند و به مصرف خوراک برسانند.

About one of Japan's greatest Confucian philosophers: "Togai’s pupils pointed out that he had written two hundred and forty-two books without saying an unkind word of any other philosopher. When he died, they placed this enviable epitaph upon his tomb: He did not talk about the faults of others... He cared for nothing but books. His life was uneventful."

Fashionable ladies rouged their cheeks, colored their nails, & occasionally gilded the lower lip; to complete their toilette 16 articles were required in the 17th century, & 20 in the 18th. They recognized 15 styles of front hair & 12 styles of back hair; they shaved their eyebrows, painted crescent moons or substituted for them 2 little black spots high up on the forehead to match their artificially blackened teeth.