The Spirit of Japan

Modernism is not in the dress of the Europeans; or in the hideous structures, where their children are interned when they take their lessons; or in the square houses with flat straight wall-surfaces, pierced with parallel lines of windows, where these people are caged in their lifetime; certainly modernism is not in their ladies' bonnets, carrying on them loads of incongruities. These are not modern, but merely European. True modernism is freedom of mind, not slavery of taste.

The genius of Japan has given you the vision of beauty in nature and the power of realising it in your life.

Your instincts have become true, your senses keen, and your hands have acquired natural skill.

mere knowledge of things can be had in a short enough time, but their spirit can only be acquired by centuries of training and self-control.

I felt that I saw something which was at the root of Japan's greatness.

is a truism to say that shadows accompany light.

only shows, that I am looking on the picture side of the canvas, and they on the blank side.

True modernism is freedom of mind, not slavery of taste.