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I speak of the old Japan, because out of the ashes of the old Japan there has risen a new Japan.

My observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity.

I believe it is important that we Japanese write a constitution for ourselves that would reflect the shape of the country we consider desirable in the 21st century.

We'll look at the japanese launch as a model and aspire to have things go as well as they did over there.

Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don't think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

Our goal is not simply to reconstruct the Japan that existed before March 11, 2011, but to build a new Japan. We are determined to overcome this historic challenge.

Japan's very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don't think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that's already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.

After my first visit to Japan, in 1960, to work on a joint model building project at Osaka University, I maintained a continuing interest in the country and the entire Far East.

So many of us, we love these things that come from Japan. We play the video games every day, we read the manga, people watch the cartoons, they absolutely love it.