Donald Richie > Quotes

“Japan never considers time together as time wasted. Rather, it is time invested.”
― Donald Richie, A Lateral View: Essays on Culture and Style in Contemporary Japan

“When I started to learn how to read, I discovered the same kind of power. I could create an environment that I didn't have, and I could order this environment in the way that I couldn't in my actual life. Then, when I learned to write, I learned that I could do this not only for myself, but for other people. I could create whole things that were believable, at least to myself, at that point. And in this way, I began to wield an authority and a power that I had not had before. In other words, every child goes through this. Some pick football and some pick the library. I picked the library.”
― Donald Richie, The Donald Richie Reader: 50 Years of Writing on Japan

“Poverty and loneliness could be seen as a liberation from strivings to become rich and popular.”
― Donald Richie, A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics

“What happened was that sometimes I was, from a young age, put in the theater to watch movies because they kept me quiet and they kept me entertained, and they got me out from under the feet of my parents. So from a very early age, I went to the movies and I soon grew to prefer the life of the movies to my own life. The reality that the movies offered was preferable to the reality that I was experiencing. I became a child movie addict. I would go in with great pleasure and I'd never look at what was playing -- what was playing was unimportant. The fact was that I was entering a new world, an environment where not only was it much more attractive than my life was ordinarily, but also I could manipulate it to an extent by coming and going, and by looking at scenes or not, which I could not in my own life. I was subjected to my own domestic life. But I discovered a kind of power at the movies.”
― Donald Richie, The Donald Richie Reader: 50 Years of Writing on Japan

“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

“It could be said that one of the marks of a truly responsible life is a voluntary death”
― Donald Richie, Mishima: A Vision of the Void

“The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty.”
― Donald Richie, A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics

“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

“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”
― Donald Richie

“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”
― Donald Richie, A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics

“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

“THE PORT OF the main island of Iejima, despite or because of its lack of tourist recommendations, is instantly attractive. Houses tumble down the hillsides, fall over each other, and all but end in the water. Their gray-tile roofs almost touch, and small and narrow alleys swarm in all directions. The mud walls, straw showing through, are so close that it would seem the inhabitants move crab-fashion. The port is filled with fishing boats, strange, junklike ships with high prows and raked sails, and around them, on the docks, are bales and coils and baskets and boxes. On all sides there is the most glorious confusion. In”
― Donald Richie, The Inland Sea

“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

“Momoko’s idea of the life of Mrs. Browning was singular. She had somehow gotten the idea that the poetess had been forced into a position much beneath her, had, in fact, been obliged to give herself to numbers of men, none of whom deserved her, and had consoled herself by penning those immortal lyrics of hers. I mentioned that the only men I know of in Elizabeth’s life were her father and her husband, both of whose intentions, so far as I had heard, had been impeccable. Yes, she nodded, pensive. She had heard of them. Robert—he was her first, her true love. And she remained true to him. While in the very throes of unfortunate transport in anonymous arms she had thought only of Robert. But certainly, I ventured, he had outlived her. He had gone on and become one of England’s greatest poets. “Did he write poetry too?” she asked, struck at the thought. “Yes, a very great deal.” She pondered, finger on cheek, then decided how sweet it was—he, the dear man, had loved her so much he had copied her. And she, forced into this promiscuous life, remained true to him, no matter what. And who forced her into it? Her father of course, crude man, who thought of nothing but money. I tried to discover where she could have uncovered such a fund of misinformation. Japanese schools teach some wild things but nothing, I think, so far from any reality as this. Upon this point, however, Momoko was not to be drawn out. She knew what she knew.”
― Donald Richie, The Inland Sea

“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.”
― Donald Richie, The Inland Sea

“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

“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

“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

“…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 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

“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.”
― Donald Richie, The Inland Sea

“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 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

“I think of hot, crowded, smog-covered Tokyo, of steaming Osaka, of poor fragmented Kyoto, and I know that even there, right now, there are carpenters and stonecutters who take pride in their work, taxi drivers who polish their cars, salesmen who believe in the company, housewives who believe in happiness, disinterested politicians, students who have faith in the future, and waitresses who manage smiles for each of their hundreds of daily customers. And I know that such things have largely vanished elsewhere. And I wondered what depths of humanity the Japanese must contain that, even now, despite everything, they remain civil to each other, remain fond of each other. And so I want to go to the font of that humanity, to this still and backward place where people live better than anywhere else because they live according to their own natures.”
― Donald Richie, The Inland Sea

“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.”
― Donald Richie, The Inland Sea

“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

“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