When you encounter something unusual, you can immediately put your knowledge to practical use, which means culture.

Tsuneari Fukuda

"Do you mind if I open the window," the playwright writer and critic was asked by an elderly woman next to him in the train heading for Shinshu. He is surprised that a poorly dressed woman who looks like a local person treated him in a Western style manner. He says he thought that she had had a good upbringing of  "keeping yourself at a distance from a stranger and determining her position". From an essay, "About Culture" written in the 1950'.

"February 9  2019

from “Oriori no Kotoba” by Kiyokazu Washida, The Asahi Shimbun"