English is necessary as at present original works of science are in English. I believe that in two decades times original works of science will start coming out in our languages. Then we can move over like the Japanese.

I had to trick people into giving me money for my first film. Making a romantic comedy is easier and more expected from a woman than it is to make a drama about a Japanese warrior.

I'd had a relationship with a French girl a Japanese girl an American girl a Filippina and she was there all the time - a Lancashire girl. I thought: 'It's a Lancashire girl I was looking for. Why didn't I realize it?'

But in Japanese there's actually not much of a relationship between the music and the words.

Many Japanese painters and calligraphers would change their names intentionally to keep their relationship to the art always fresh. This way others' expectations can be avoided.

As I grew up I was continually to suffer hardships in different realms of life - in my family in my relationship to Japanese society and in my way of living at large in the latter half of the twentieth century.

And they said if we help with the crisis they would do a lot of positive acts. After we helped in those crises they showed negative acts and the Japanese and Turks were ashamed.

I often imagine that the longer he studies English literature the more the Japanese student must be astonished at the extraordinary predominance given to the passion of love both in fiction and in poetry.

It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese.

Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones gut this is only in part true.