Patrick Smith

“Or the Japanese may go in an entirely different direction—an interesting possibility, given that the West itself has now begun to question whether the Enlightenment has run its course, or if there was something wrong with such a course in the first place. But to cast the matter in these terms is to miss the point entirely. The endeavor is not to be like us—to keep on borrowing. The endeavor is to understand where they have been and go on from there—precisely without, for the first time, borrowing from anybody. It is to accept all of their own past—as past. One cannot claw back the parts of the past that were a mistake. Neither can one go on dreaming fantastic futures.”
― Patrick Smith, Japan: A Reinterpretation