Quotes from Donald Richie

Japan never considers time together as time wasted. Rather, it is time invested.

Poverty and loneliness could be seen as a liberation from strivings to become rich and popular.

It could be said that one of the marks of a truly responsible life is a voluntary death

The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty.

In retrospect, the reason for her decision seems evident. Our Noriko, for so many years troubled by the demands of society on one hand and the needs of the self on the other, finally decided. She would do what she wanted. And she did. All attempts to lure her out over the years have been rebuffed. When a documentary was made on Ozu, she refused to appear, just as, when he died, she did not attend his funeral. Setsuko Hara was her own person at last. On Japanese actress Setsuko Hara

Here we would notice that what we would call Japanese aesthetics (in contrast to Western aesthetics) is more concerned with process than with product, with the actual construction of a self than with self-expression. The

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.

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.

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.

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.

Japan continues to give this unexampled view of history. It also offers the excitement of watching change. Old and new in these small provincial cities continue to exist side by side, and the new is often built directly beside, rather than directly on top of. One may, for a time, compare; for a space, see history in the gap. Very attractive to a heritage-starved, history-parched American.

Along with too many people and too much money have come the ills that now afflict America, Europe, Japan alike. And while I can accept the crowds, the autos, the television, I cannot accept the diminution of humanity that follows—the sensationalism, the cynicism, the brutality. Though I am not interested in the humane disciplines, not interested in humanity itself, I am interested in people, some of them, and I believe in them, a few of them.

Shinto is nature. Perhaps animism—and Shinto is the only formal animistic religion left—is the true religion. It has roots deep in all of us. One recognizes this. It is the only religion that can inspire the feeling children know when the wind or a rock is made god for a week or a day. Its essence is unknown and unknowable, yet this unknown does not exclude us because we too are unknown. This religion speaks to us, to something in us which is deep and permanent.