Japan Quotes

Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with Japan.

By almost every account he's a fine young man. I'm simply tr

By almost every account he's a fine young man. I'm simply trying to figure out why I should care that he's three centimeters taller than he was in May.

John Burnham Schwartz

Love Japan Schwartz The Commoner Crown Prince Empress

Even in former days, Korea was known as the 'hermit kingdom'

Even in former days, Korea was known as the 'hermit kingdom' for its stubborn resistance to outsiders. And if you wanted to create a totally isolated and hermetic society, northern Korea in the years after the 1953 'armistice' would have been the place to start. It was bounded on two sides by the sea, and to the south by the impregnable and uncrossable DMZ, which divided it from South Korea. Its northern frontier consisted of a long stretch of China and a short stretch of Siberia; in other words its only contiguous neighbors were Mao and Stalin. (The next-nearest neighbor was Japan, historic enemy of the Koreans and the cruel colonial occupier until 1945.) Add to that the fact that almost every work of man had been reduced to shards by the Korean War. Air-force general Curtis LeMay later boasted that 'we burned down town in North Korea,' and that he grounded his bombers only when there were no more targets to hit anywhere north of the 38th parallel. Pyongyang was an ashen moonscape. It was Year Zero. Kim Il Sung could create a laboratory, with controlled conditions, where he alone would be the engineer of the human soul.

Christopher Hitchens

China Kim Il Sung Korea Curtis Lemay Division Of Korea Hermit Kingdom Japan Joseph Stalin Korea Under Japanese Rule