This book features conversations between Donald Keene, a preeminent scholar of Japanese literature, and Shiba Ryotaro, an author who continued to contemplate the human condition through his original and distinctive lens of history. These talks-which mainly explore the foundation of Japanese culture-took place in Japanese on three occasions in 1971, in the historic cities of Nara, Kyoto and Osaka. Drawing on their profound insights into Japan's relations with foreign cultures over the course of Japanese history, the two engage in a passionate discussion of their first-hand impressions and observations of Japanese culture. This article contains a translation of the third chapter of the book “The People and Culture of Japan”. In the third chapter, culture and art of the Muromachi period is being discussed. The main attention in the conversation is given to the formation of the aesthetic principles of this time, which influenced the further development of Japanese culture. Reflecting on the features of the concept of beauty “in Japanese”, the interlocutors consider the features of the Golden Temple and the Silver Pavilion, Japanese architecture, painting and ceramics. Donald Keene is a Japanologist who has published about 25 books in English on Japanese topics, including both studies of Japanese literature and culture and translations of Japanese classical and modern literature, including a four-volume history of Japanese literature. Keene has also published about 30 books in Japanese, some of which have been translated from English. He is President of the Donald Keene Foundation for Japanese Culture. He received the Medal of Culture in 2008. Shiba Ryotaro was born in Osaka in 1923, and graduated from the Mongolian department at the Osaka Foreign Language School. In 1960, while working as a newspaper reporter, he received the Naoki Prize for his first novel “Fukuro-no shiro” (Castle of Owls), after which he became a full-time novelist. He has received many other awards, including the Japan Art Academy’s Imperial Award, for his numerous historical works such as “Kukai-no fukei” (Kukai the Universal: Scenes from his Life). He received the Order of Culture in 1993. Other prominent publications include “Ryoma-ga yuku” (Ryoma Goes his Way), “Kaido-wo yuku” (On the Highway), “Kono Kuni-no Katachi” (The Form of Our Country), and “Saka-no ue-no kumo”(Clouds above the Hill). He died in February 1996.