Donald Richie - The Japan Times

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Donald Richie

Donald Richie began writing regularly for The Japan Times in 1954, initially writing film and stage reviews. In the early '70s he began writing book reviews and continued contributing until 2009. He wrote more than 40 books on Japanese aesthetics, and he is widely considered the pre-eminent expert on Japanese cinema.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jul 29, 2007

Not all nonsense is silly

Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times, by Miriam Silverberg. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, 370 pp., with many illustrations $49.95 (cloth) From the late 1920s on, the impact of the modern on traditional Japan had become so noticeable that some new terminology...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jul 22, 2007

Welcome additions to the newest anthology of Japanese literature

The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From 1945 to the Present, edited by J. Thomas Rimer and Van C. Gessel, with additional selections by poetry editors Amy Vladeck Heinrich and Hiroaki Sato. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007, 864 pp., $59.50 (cloth). Anthologists must consider...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jul 15, 2007

Place for the dead in our living world

THE BUDDHIST DEAD: Practices, Discourses, Representations, edited by Bryan J. Cuevas and Jacqueline I. Stone. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007, 492 pp., with illustrations, $65 (cloth) Buddhism has, at least in the public mind, monopolized death. In Japan, birth and marriage are usually Shinto...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jun 17, 2007

First woman was the sun, then there came man

IN THE BEGINNING, WOMAN WAS THE SUN: The Autobiography of a Japanese Feminist — Hiratsuka Raicho, translated with an introduction and notes by Teruko Craig. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, 432 pp., $35 (cloth) One of the earliest among those who battled to reform the social and legal...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jun 10, 2007

Bunroku Shishi: Finding humor in a recovering postwar Japan

SCHOOL OF FREEDOM, by Bunroku Shishi, translated and with an afterword by Lynne E. Riggs. Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan: Ann Arbor, 2006, 256 pp., $29.95 (cloth). Bunroku Shishi (1893-1969), who was born as Toyoo Iwata, had two occupations, just as he had two names. He was...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jun 3, 2007

Oishi Seinosuke: the trial and its outcome

THE LIFE OF SEINOSUKE: Dr. Oishi and the High Treason Incident, by Joseph Cronin. Kyoto: White Tiger Press, 2007, 128 pp., with photographs and drawings, 1,800 yen (paper) The High Treason Incident (Taigyaku Jiken) was an anarchist plot to assassinate the Meiji emperor, one that led to the 1910 mass...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

May 27, 2007

Japan's first cosmopolitan in the face of nationalism

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF YUKICHI FUKUZAWA, revised translation by Eiichi Kiyooka, preface by Kammei Ishikawa, with a foreword and afterword by Albert M. Craig. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007, (1966), 480 pp., with frontispiece photo, $30 (paper) The political scientist Masao Maruyama wrote in...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

May 20, 2007

It is in the places in between that cultures truly merge

THE PLACES IN BETWEEN by Rory Stewart. New York: Harcourt Books. 300 pp., with 26 photos and numerous drawings, 2006, $14.00 (paper) In 2002 Rory Stewart, author and former British diplomat, walked across Afghanistan. The country had been at war for 25 years, its government in place for just two weeks,...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

May 13, 2007

Combining East and West in dramaturgy

AN ACTOR'S TRICKS by Yoshi Oida and Lorna Marshall, foreword by Peter Brook. London: Methuen Drama, A&A Black Ltd., 2007, 102 pp., £10.99 (paper) Yoshi Oida, born in 1933, is one of Japan's most interesting actor-directors. Trained in the classical stage disciplines, particularly that of the...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

May 6, 2007

The different cases of Inspector Hanshichi

THE CURIOUS CASEBOOK OF INSPECTOR HANSHICHI: Detective Stories of Old Edo, by Kido Okamoto, translated by Ian MacDonald. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007, 335 pp., $24 (paper) Between 1916 and 1937 the critic and playwright Kido Okamoto (1872-1939) published the "Hanshichi Torimonocho"; stories,...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Apr 29, 2007

Gorilla snot and Tokyo sauce

TABLOID TOKYO 2, by Geoff Botting, Ryann Connell, Michael Hoffman, Masuo Kamiyama, Mark Schreiber; Illustrations by Hirosuke Ueno; foreword by Mark Schreiber. Toyko: Kodansha International, 2007, 288 pp., profusely illustrated, 1,400 yen (paper) The success of the first volume of "Tabloid Tokyo" has...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Apr 22, 2007

The man behind the woman

AN AMERICAN DIARY OF A JAPANESE GIRL, by Yone Noguchi, with an introduction by Laura E. Franey, an afterword by Edward Marx and illustrations by Genjiro Yeto. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007, 202 pp., $23.95 (paper) Yonejiro Noguchi (1875-1947) adopted the pen name of Yone when he left Japan...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Apr 15, 2007

A great naturalist, and a pretty good shot

BORNEO, CELEBES, ARU, by Alfred Russel Wallace. London: Penguin Books, 2007, 112 pp., with maps, £4.99 (paper) The great naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) traveled widely in what was then called the East Indies and which we now know as Malaysia and Indonesia. Between 1854 and 1862 he...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Apr 8, 2007

New look for Japan's oldest book

THE KOJIKI, edited by Yoshinobu Hirata, illustrated by Yuko Mori. Tokyo: Kumon Shuppan (5-bancho, Chiyoda-ku), 2004, 160 pp., 951 yen (cloth) "The birth of Japan. The gods give us a story of love and violence." Thus is introduced this Japanese-language manga-illustrated edition of the "Kojiki" (Record...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Apr 1, 2007

Buddha's fighting soldiers

THE TEETH AND CLAWS OF BUDDHISM: Monastic Warriors and Sohei in Japanese History, by Mikael S. Adolphson. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007, 214 pp., with 32 illustrations and maps, $36 (cloth) Buddha with fangs and claws is an unexpected image, if only because religions so often express themselves...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Mar 25, 2007

The fanned flames of fashion

Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook, by Patrick Macias and Izumi Evers, illustrations by Kazumi Nonaka. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2007, 148 pp., profusely illustrated, $16.95 (paper) Fashionable clothing on young women is often seen as an indication of the state...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Mar 18, 2007

From profession to prostitution

Selling Songs and Smiles: The Sex Trade in Heian and Kamakura Japan, by Janet R. Goodwin. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007, 208 pp. with maps, $48 (cloth) Prince Genji was apparently among the few to resist the charms of those bands of young women who made a living by offering themselves....

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Mar 11, 2007

What made Japan join the fast-food nations?

Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity, by Katarzyna J. Cwiertka. London: Reaktion Books, 2006, 240 pp., 89 b/w illustrations, £22.50 (cloth) While it is true that we are what we eat, it is equally true that we eat what we are -- that is, our cuisine often mirrors our condition....

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Mar 4, 2007

Shooting arrows to the end of the universe

Zen Bow, Zen Arrow: The Life and Teachings of Awa Kenzo, the Archery Master from "Zen in the Art of Archery", by John Stevens. Boston/London: Shambahala, 2007, 104 pp. with photographs, $12.95 (paper). Archery, or kyudo, "the Way of the bow," has a venerable Asian history. Confucius recommended it as...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Feb 18, 2007

Yoshu Chikanobu: the neglected master of Japanese prints

Chikanobu: Modernity and Nostalgia in Japanese Prints, by Bruce A. Coats, with essays by Allen Hockley, Kyoko Kurita and Joshua S. Mostow. Leiden: Hotei/Brill Publishing, 2006, 208 pp., 280 color illustrations, $99 (cloth) This is the first monograph in English on the Meiji Era print-maker Yoshu Chikanobu...

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Japan’s summer music festivals are feeling the heat in more ways than one

Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.

The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'

By Tomoko Otake

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