Post-War Japan Quotes

My parents were born in the 1930s, and they experienced the air raids on Tokyo.

After the Second World War, people in Japan no longer died for their country, and even that expression was no longer used.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the occupation of Japan and Germany was the relatively free hand the occupation forces enjoyed in imposing policy on the conquered country. This was especially dramatic in the case of Japan. There, the occupying forces wrote a new constitution for the country and essentially handed it down to the occupied with little local consultation in ways that are quite astonishing today for their radicalness and their dictatorial quality. In Germany the occupying forces had the luxury of postponing national elections for three years giving them precious time to purge the old guard and reestablish order before putting the new political system to the test.

General Macarthur did not bring democracy to the Japanese. If anyone, it was Curtis Lemay.

In Japan, after having lost World War II, the hierarchy that used to exist in the society, from the rich to the poor, has been flattened, especially by the winners, by Americans. As a Japanese artist debuting in America, I really had to bring that kind of theme into the work.

There was a time in the mid-1950s when the Philippines was in the same league as Japan economically and academically. Fifty years down the road, and we are almost dead last in the ASEAN region.

Grave of the Fireflies is an emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation... It belongs on any list of the greatest war films ever made.

One of my favorite films is 'Late Spring' by Yasujiro Ozu. To me, it represents film as art.

My generation in Japan lived in limbo. We dreamed between two worlds.

For children of my generation, anime was an escape from Japan's loser complex following World War II. Anime wasn't foreign. It was our own.

When I think of Tokyo Story, yeah, it is like a novella. That doesn't mean it's not great. Some of my favorite Tolstoy works are his novellas.

Except for a short period at the end of World War II, I attended an elementary school affiliated to Kobe University from ages six to twelve and then moved on to Nada Middle and High School from ages twelve to eighteen. I enjoyed many out-door activities in my youth.

After World War II great strides were made in modern Japanese architecture, not only in advanced technology, allowing earthquake resistant tall buildings, but expressing and infusing characteristics of traditional Japanese architecture in modern buildings.