Takashi Murakami Quotes

Each time I visit Japan, I am reminded of how Canadian I am and how little racial connection matters.

I never thought fashion was the job for me, because I'm Japanese. Clothes! That was a European, society thing.

The fans, man, the fans have a little different way of thinking. They really applaud the spirit of fighters, and that put a huge influence on the type of energy I fought with, rather than if I won or lost. America's a real win-or-lose culture, where with the Japanese, fighting with spirit is enough.

In Japan, violence isn't as controversial as it is in the West.

Your hair looks funny," Lief said, as soon as the Ugloids left. "It stands straight up!" No," said Nick, intensely irritated, "It's hanging straight down." Lief just gave him an upside-down shrug. "Up is down in China and you're part-Chinese.

European travellers find the Japanese a smiling race.

Americans really don't understand the Japanese nature, but it's not an easy thing to understand.

But anything that you hear about Japan is nothing like what you see when you actually go over there and see it, you know, in a real situation.

Whatever doubts or vexations one has in Japan, it is only necessary to ask one's self: "Well, who are the best people to live with?

I suppose I do the Japanese because I just don't know China. Chinese popular culture has never evoked that instant of, "Whoah! What's that?" that I have with Japanese popular culture.

In Europe, being an artist is a form of behavior. In America, it's an excuse for a form of behavior.

Japanese attitudes toward work seem to be critically different from American attitudes.

When I first went to Japan, I was wrestling under my real name. The Japanese people have a great amount of difficulty with the letters f, r and l. So three out of the six letters in my first name they couldn't say. It was a bit of a mouthful for those guys.

Early on, people told me I was making Chinese people look bad. I've been living with this accent. I had already been doing standup for a while. I knew my voice already. I myself never wanted to make my accent the butt of the joke. I never want it to be, 'I'm laughing at your accent.'

When you're an outsider and going into a culture like America, it's easier to stay away from any cliches because you're not really aware of what they are.

People think that being Korean is all one thing.

It was a tough moment for me when I was in Senegal, especially when I was young. I was born in a village, I grew up there, and they don't like football.

I was 12 years old when I first moved to New York, and at that age, you're trying to find yourself. It was hard being so different from everyone I was around, and I felt that nobody could really understand me because everyone was American, and I was this little English girl with an accent.

The English are very exotic to me.

English sense has toiled, but Hindoo wisdom never perspired.

One of my earliest memories involves sitting on my dad’s lap in his studio in the garage of our house and watching him draw. I remember thinking: ‘I want to do that, too,’ and I pretty much decided then and there at age 2½ or 3 that I was an artist just like Dad.

There is no madder nation than Japan. ... And that nation has the highest rate of suicide, has the highest rate of thick-lens glasses and did the most suicidal trick a few years ago. It's the doggonedest country.

The difference of the English and Irish character is nowhere more plainly discerned than in their respective kitchens. With the former, this apartment is probably the cleanest, and certainly the most orderly, in the house.... An Irish kitchenis usually a temple dedicated to the goddess of disorder; and, too often, joined with her, is the potent deity of dirt.

That morning was when I first began to reappraise the 'white man.' It was when I first began to perceive that 'white man,' as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions.

I think fundamentalism is this radical attitude toward one's own identity and civilization as compared to other people's identities and cultures.