A History of Japan Quotes

“Official dogma had ranked the merchants below other commoners because they did not produce anything. Like the samurai they lived off the work of others, but they did not share the samurai responsibility for administration and general welfare. In the eyes of the more hidebound Confucian theorists, merchants were little better than cunning parasites.”
― Richard H.P. Mason, History of Japan

“The very word for "government" in ancient Japan was matsurigoto, meaning "the business of worship.”
― Richard H.P. Mason, History of Japan

“the winning blows were struck by a typhoon on 15 August 1281. This typhoon has come to be known as the divine wind, or kamikaze, a name revived during the closing stages of the war in the Pacific (1941-45) for suicide pilots who used their planes to ram enemy shipping. The original kamikaze effectively thwarted the Mongols,”
― Richard H.P. Mason, History of Japan

“A preacher ought to be good-looking. For, if we are properly to understand his worthy sentiments, we must keep our eyes on him while he speaks; should we look away, we may forget to listen. Accordingly, an ugly preacher may well be the source of sin...”
― Richard H.P. Mason, History of Japan

“The prescribed setting is removed from the everyday world, but reminiscent of it in essentials: a tea house, just three meters square, set in a garden, with a stone water basin, lantern, and toilet. Entering the room, one becomes not a spectator but a participant. The smell of incense, the sight of a scroll hung in an alcove with a simple flower arrangement below, subtly stimulate the senses. The simmering of the iron kettle over a charcoal fire is likened to the sound of the wind in the pine trees. Tea—thick, green, and bitter—is made with the utmost economy of movement. After each participant has sipped a bowl of tea, the conversation turns to the quality of the tea bowl itself and associated subjects.”
― Richard H.P. Mason, History of Japan

“Sōkagakkai's proclaimed principles of goodness, beauty, and benefit cannot be quarreled with; but, lacking a more systematic ideology, it has placed great emphasis on organizing and making zealous militants of its followers.”
― Richard H.P. Mason, History of Japan

“Furthermore, Tokugawa policies were not based on some dictate of unreason, such as excessive nationalism or blind expansionism. They were Confucian in inspiration, and Confucianism held that actions should spring from reason rather than impulse.”
― Richard H.P. Mason, History of Japan

“Individual caprice, or even considered personal judgment, carried relatively little weight in routine administration, with men preferring to base their decisions on consensus and precedent and have them enforced through published regulations and statutory codes.”
― Richard H.P. Mason, History of Japan

“The Manyōshū is Japanese in the vital sense that the language in which it was written was Japanese, a language quite different from Chinese in its structure. But since the Japanese had not yet evolved a script of their own, the verses were written in Chinese characters. Some of the characters were used, as in China, to convey meaning; but others were used in a different way—to give an idea of the sounds that made up the Japanese words. The result is that while the Manyōshū looks Chinese, it is really Japanese written down in the only script its compilers knew.”
― Richard H.P. Mason, History of Japan