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As for the use of the bomb, she would say, βIt was war and we had to expect it.β And then she would add, βShikata ga nai,β a Japanese expression as common as, and corresponding to, the Russian word βnichevoβ: βIt canβt be helped. Oh, well. Too bad.β Dr. Fujii said approximately the same thing about the use of the bomb to Father Kleinsorge one evening, in German: βDa ist nichts zu machen. Thereβs nothing to be done about it.
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John Hersey (Hiroshima)
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Shikata ga nai.β The phrase was as familiar to Sumi as Nobuβs face and meant: βIt cannot be helped.β Teenagers
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Jan Jarboe Russell (The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II)
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Shikata ga nai.β It canβt be helped. It
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C.L. Stone (Black and Green (The Ghost Bird, #11))
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Japanese often use the expression shikata-ga-nai (there is nothing you can do) as a fatalistic response to a given circumstance. They assume that circumstance is all there is; they face that shikata-ga-nai with stoic resignation. But the Christian God offers a reality far greater, a possibility of the infinite breaking through, even though the fallen world is cursed and operates within the limitations of a natural, closed mechanism.
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Makoto Fujimura (Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering)
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Shikata ga nai,β Maya said sardonically. There is no other choice.
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Kim Stanley Robinson (Green Mars (Mars Trilogy, #2))
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shikata ga nai,
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Kim Stanley Robinson (Green Mars (Mars Trilogy, #2))
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Shikata ga nai,
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James S.A. Corey (Persepolis Rising (The Expanse, #7))
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Shikata ga nai: it could not be helped. If this was a monumentally inadequate excuse for condemning millions to death without hope of securing any redemptive compensation, it is a constant of history that nations which start wars find it very hard to stop them.
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Max Hastings (Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945)
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Shikata ga fucking nai, sa sa?
-Naomi
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James S.A. Corey (Cibola Burn (The Expanse, #4))