The Japan Journals Quotes

“What do I want to be when I grow up? An attractive role would be that of the bunjin. He is the Japanese scholar who wrote and painted in the Chinese style, a literatus, something of a poetaster - a pose popular in the 18th century. I, however, would be a later version, someone out of the end of the Meiji, who would pen elegant prose and work up flower arrangements from dried grasses and then encourage spiders to make webs and render it all natural. For him, art is a moral force and he cannot imagine life without it. He is also the kind of casual artist who, after a day's work is done, descends into his pleasure park and dallies.”
― Donald Richie, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

“Having lived most of my life in the most crowded city in the world, I have become used to this constant physical proximity. Wherever I look the gaze is broken by people; in train and subway I am constantly brushed by others. One learns to ignore them, to see past them or through them. And when they get in the way, one politely endures them.

They are not regarded as people. There are too many of them. They are things. I read once that a wolf can tolerate the company of only fifty other wolves—after that he turns savage and attacks. With humans the number must be higher. Attacks occur, however, and will become more frequent as the earth fills up. And it will.”
― Donald Richie, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

“…I then look up into the evening sky where the e-mail courses and the internet surfs. Here, like modern sorcerers, fly the young, each alone, to type his or her way into what must pass as a communication — but of a strange and limited kind: one where you must draw little faces with smiles or frowns to show what you feel — an analogue system of emotions, either yes or no, but nothing in between.

Here, it is said, a kind of dialogue takes place. But it takes place between two keyboards in two rooms in two cities or countries or continents. And the hands on those keyboards fabricate the person — he or she is arbitrarily created according to the wishes or desires or compulsions of the moment: a protean creature, which can change into any self. It is not communication but imposture.

In a further sense as well — this is a universe of words, only words, and words are only agreed upon signals to denote a reality, not the reality itself. They are notoriously clumsy; they are coarse compared to the real. It is the real that is excised in this modern mode. (10 January 1996)”
― Donald Richie, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

“In the bath the attitude toward sex is representative. No people have it more firmly in place. They are a bit puritanical sometimes, and a number of prudes exist, but there is no people less prurient. What they are prurient about is money. Some Japanese treat money as we treat sex. But, as for sex—well, there are no young bloods trying to peak over the partition.”
― Donald Richie, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

“As always, so polite that he is at the beginning distant, and yet always determined. This is because he has uses for us all. Yukio is not only a dramatist but also a practicing stage director. For the drama of his life, he has cast us in our various roles, those demanded by the rigor of the script. Each of us has his or her purpose—or else we would not have seen him at all.”
― Donald Richie, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

“As the economy collapses prices remain high. This is, I guess, very Japanese. In some other countries there would be at least a few merchants who would lower their expectations. Not here, however. There are new alternatives (the hundred-yen malls), but nothing established lowers anything. Perhaps it is because quality is judged by price. If you lower the price you lessen the quality. There is thus really no such thing as a bargain. Indeed, some raise their prices as though to tempt through exceptional quality—this is the way Wako Department Store works. The goods are in no way exceptional, but the prices are. Consequently anything merely wrapped in Wako paper is first-rate. I remember tales that in the far hinterlands people used to paper their walls with Tokyo department store paper, simply to give tone.”
― Donald Richie, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

“What I have done is to draw and redraw my portrait in front of the backdrop of Japan. I have exemplified what Helen Mears devoted Japan, Mirror for Americans to. You look into this country and find yourself reflected.

It is not a simple process. You can do this only if you describe the place as it is. Only then, through what you emphasize and what you do not, does your own form become visible. I am the empty places in my books.”
― Donald Richie, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

“Fumio to dinner. We look at old photos. I turn up one of [Na­ka­no] Yuji at work—part-time laborer, standing there for forty years now.

I wondered why I still think so much about him, now that I have not seen him for decades, now that he is an old man, if even alive. Fumio said, “Because, he was the last Japanese.”

It’s true. Yuji had all of the old virtues—he saw a connection between himself and nature, the way things are. He believed in authority, though he was sly about evading it; was polite, decent, honest to the extent that he did not get caught; willing to do his best and allow himself to be much imposed on; fond of pleasure, and probably drank himself to death. And, more, he embodied an attitude now extinct—he accepted without bitterness, and made the most of what was left. I don’t know if this defines old-fashioned Japanese-ness, but it defines Yuji.”
― Donald Richie, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

“Leo Rubinfein over to ask questions for his book. He asked me what I most regretted, having lived half a century here, and witnessed all the change. I said that I most regretted the loss of a kind of symbiosis between people and where they lived, a kind of agreement to respect each other. I again mention the paradigm—the builders make a hole in their wall to accommodate the limb of a tree. No more now. It is more expensive to make a hole than it is to cut down the tree, just as it is cheaper to raze than to restore. And since the environment is now so different, the people are different. This is symbiotic, too, degraded environment makes degraded people who make more degraded environment.

And with it I regret the loss of a kind of curiosity. People used to be curious about each other. Now they have their hands full with their convenient and portable environment—Walkman in the ears, manga for the eyes, and the portable phone (which now contains their lives) in the palm of their hands. Many Japanese no longer look at each other, or those they talk to—those on that select menu of known voices on their phones they cannot see. These robots, I regret.”
― Donald Richie, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

“In the same way both Lincoln and the Japanese regard people. These are also a kind of currency. A man is worth what he does. Lincoln upon hearing a new name asks, “What does he do?” Almost never, “What has he done?” Much more often, “What does he want to do?” He invests in people—as do the Japanese, and just as freely, just as openly. People are currency. They pay dividends. Both Lincoln and the Japanese pay high dividends too. The resulting relationship is one of nature’s happiest—symbiosis.

Flesh may dazzle, wit may seduce, but not for long. Infatuation over in a matter of minutes, Lincoln wants to know, “Now, what is it that you can do best?” He wants to know because then, to protect his investment, he will put you on the proper road, help you achieve your potential. Often in his own country Lincoln is misunderstood. They do not comprehend that there are rewards for accomplishment but that there is no sympathy for failure.

Japan understands well. This most pragmatic of people do not count hopes or intentions as accomplishments. A man is what he does. After his death, he is what he has done.”
― Donald Richie, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

“Late, going home, I pass a group of squatting high schoolers. One of the boys, obviously seeking to impress the girls, says that foreigners are funny (okashii no yo). The sight of me has prompted the remark and he is, like everyone else, unaware that some foreigners speak Japanese. It is thus not a provocative remark, but an observation he might have made of a passing dog, in reference to dogs in general.

I am not offended by the remark (it is scarcely personal), but I am interested that the remark was made at all. He made it because he wanted to assert their feeling of being in a group. By defining those outside this group as funny, he strengthened their group feeling of not being funny. This made everyone feel good. And for so long as a feel-good grouping is necessary, we will have xenophobia, racism, and all the rest. The only solution is to dissolve the pleasures of groupery.

Had I become angry, felt slighted, outraged, etc., I would have become as culpable as they, for I would have brought my own feelings of group (as a foreigner) to strive against theirs.”
― Donald Richie, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

“Perhaps more than an American high school, Japan is like an English public school. You are supposed to learn, excel, and win athletic distinctions—not for yourself, but for the house and for the country, for being Japanese. First on the field, all for the sake of your school. And then, the emptiness when you graduate.”
― Donald Richie, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

“Owen is utterly out of whatever closet he may once have been in. Is resident Concerned Gay Medical Personnel, or some such. This being so, everything is devoted to the political aspect of homosexuality. And this means exclusivity. His is a polarized view. There are homos in the world and then there are heteros. Nothing else. A bipolar existence. Table d’hôte enforced. Either Lunch A or Lunch B. No à la carte.

All of his stories have a homo conclusion; all of his references are to the “gay community”; all conclusions point to a closed and intensely self-conscious group society. Part of the reason, of course, is that he is talking to me. But another part is that he has committed himself. And when you do this, you invest. Political preference takes over. You become a card-carrying Catholic, a card-carrying Communist, a card-carrying Cocksucker.”
― Donald Richie, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004