The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

From Publishers Weekly
Since moving to Japan in 1947, Richie has written hundreds of books, directed several films and befriended dozens of Japanese celebrities, including composer Taru Takemitsu, novelist-icon Yukio Mishima and filmmaker Akira Kurasawa. Richie has also been the point of contact for non-Japanese artists such as Francis Ford Coppola, Truman Capote and Igor Stravinsky. But what will interest most readers are not so much Richie’s erudite observations on Japanese cultural life as his rather saucy descriptions of his experiences in the country. A self-confessed "sexaholic," Richie declares that he’s slept with "thousands" of people, and sex and sexual relationships are themes that dominate the journals. Richie does give some sense of how Japan has changed in the 50-odd years that he has lived there, but this perspective is constrained because Richie’s context rarely transcends his immediate surroundings. As such, the entries sometimes read like a series of cryptic pieces. There are moments where Richie shines, such as when he describes his divorce and his experiences with Mishima. His views on the intersections of xenophobia, racism "and all the rest" are both poignant and disturbing. For example, after being solicited by a couple of schoolgirls, Ritchie wonders how anyone could think prostitution is wrong, except "if the person does not want to sell, well maybe." But the journals live up to his reputation as a charming wit, and if the erratic narrative sometimes seems surreal, enough bits and pieces come together to inform readers of the Japan Richie experienced as an American insider. 75 b&w photos.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"No writer about Japan matches Richie's breadth of knowledge, depth and variety of experience, and his love of the people he writes about." Ian Buruma

Book Description

Donald Richie has been observing and writing about Japan from the moment he arrived on New Year's Eve, 1946. Detailing his life, his attachments, and his ideas on matters high and low, The Japan Journals is a record of both a nation and an evolving expatriate sensibility. A friend of the famous -- Kawabata, D. T. Suzuki, Mishima, Takemitsu, Tamasaburo to name a few -- Richie was also given to ardors not tolerated in his own country but not forbidden in Japan. As Japan modernizes and as the author ages, Richie's tone grows elegiac, and The Japan Journals becomes an overwhelmingly poignant experience of a complicated life well lived and captivatingly told.

Donald Richie (1924-), the eminent film historian, novelist and essayist, still lives in Tokyo.

Leza Lowitz is coauthor of Sacred Sanskrit Words and Designing with Kanji.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Japan Journals covers the period from Richie's first arrival to nearly sixty years later. Much of what Richie wrote in his journals ended up in publication elsewhere. The material being published in The Japan Journals has not been seen before, like this entry dated October 19, 1948:

Sho [Shozo Kajima] in to see me this morning, wanting nothing in particular, just to talk. Small, eyes so big they look round, he is the only Japanese I have met whose English is so good that we can carry on conversations about things that matter to us. Particularly matter to him. Anything foreign, as though he has been starved for so long that he cannot get enough.

Now we discuss the possibilities of translating Camus into Japanese, an dhow the intellectuals here now shun Sartre. Sho blames it on Life magazine, just now discovering existentialism and hence degrading its current reputation in Japan.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"The transformation of Japan from post-war devastation to twenty-first-century economic and cultural powerhouse has been a remarkable spectacle. Donald Richie arrived in Tokyo on New Year's Day 1947 and since then has been living there to witness and report on this change. For over fifty years Richie's work - comprising dozens of books and hundreds of essays - had helped define modern Japan and Japanese culture for Western readers." "Now, having reached his celebratory eightieth year, this long-time observer of others has decided to open his private journals to public view. Spanning his entire time in Japan, Richie's writings show a man who is still intellectually engaged and still passionately romantic." "In the 1940s Richie eagerly violated U.S. Occupation rules against "fraternization" to sneak into movie theaters and concerts. His early work as a reporter for Stars and Stripes in Tokyo led to a career as a writer and critic. Interested in film, books, art, and music, he got to meet (and write in his Journals about) scores of Japanese luminaries, among them authors Yasunari Kawabata and Yukio Mishima, Zen philosopher D.T. Suzuki, composer Toru Takemitsu, Kabuki actor Tamasaburo Bando, and directors Yasujiro Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, and Nagisa Oshima." As Richie's reputation grew (he was instrumental in introducing Japanese film to the West), he became to "go-to guy" for American and European artists passing through town. In the Journals are snippets of conversations from many of these encounters, portraying a whining Truman Capote, a self-absorbed Stephen Spender, a delightful Marguerite Yourcenar. Here, too, are examples of Richie's famously deft travel sketches of landscapes, buildings, and the Japanese urban scene and sense of style.

FROM THE CRITICS

Lesley Downer - The New York Times

In all the years Richie has lived in Japan, he has never lost his curiosity and freshness of vision. His journals are wonderfully evocative and full of humor, but also honest, introspective and often poignant. Growing older, he finds himself examining just what it is that has kept him for so long in a country where he will forever be seen as an outsider. To be in a country but not of it breeds loneliness, but also bestows freedom. In Japan, it seems, Donald Richie has discovered a place where he has been free to be himself.

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