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

Feb 11, 2007

On the line between East and West

Glory in a Line: A Life of Foujita--the Artist Caught Between East and West, by Phyllis Birnbaum. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006, 332 pp., with photographs. $27.50 (cloth) The line referred to in this excellent biography of the troubled artist, Tsuguharu Fujita (1886-1968), is the "thin...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Feb 4, 2007

Thoughts behind the picture book

Ehon: The Artist And the Book in Japan, by Roger S. Keyes, foreword by Paul LeClerc. The New York Public Library in association with the University of Washington Press, 2006, 320 pp., 250 color illustrations, $50 (cloth) "Ehon" means "picture book," that is, a volume comprising pictures along with some...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jan 28, 2007

Why apologize profusely as a woman, when you can insult like a man?

A CULTURAL HISTORY OF JAPANESE WOMEN'S LANGUAGE by Endo Orie. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, Center for Japanese Studies, 2006, 140 pp., $38 (cloth) When I was first studying Japanese back in 1947, I went to a local language school where the teachers were mostly older ladies, born in the Meiji...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jan 21, 2007

Sex in the Forbidden City

Rene Leys, by Victor Segalen, translated and with an introduction by J.A. Underwood, preface by Ian Buruma. New York: New York Review of Books, 2003, 210 pp. $14 (paper) "Who is this lad, this Belgian youth, who forbids Manchu princes possession of their future concubines? . . . . Who . . . has attained...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jan 14, 2007

Once in keeping with some of the best company

In the Company of Men: Representations of Male-Male Sexuality in Meiji Literature, by Jim Reichert. Stanford University Press, 2006, 282 pp., illustrations XI, $60.00 (cloth). The search for modernity in the Meiji Era (1868-1912) involved not only the discovery of some new subject matter but also the...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jan 7, 2007

Through the Terayama looking glass

THE EXPERIMENTAL IMAGE WORLD OF SHUJI TERAYAMA, DVD four-volume box set. Tokyo: Daguerreo Press, Inc./Image Forum Video, 2006, color/monochrome, English subtitles, bilingual menu, audio commentaries (Japanese only) by Nobuhiro Kawanaka, Tatsuo Suzuki, Sakumi Hagiwara and Henriku Morisaki, 346 min., 18,900...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Dec 24, 2006

The spirit of classics in a luminous new translation

TALES OF MOONLIGHT AND RAIN by Ueda Akinari, translated by Anthony H. Chambers. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, 236 pp., with 1776 edition woodcuts, $29.95 (cloth). Ueda Akinari (1734-1809), scholar and poet, is remembered for his collection of nine stories, the "Ugetsu Monogatari," first...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Dec 17, 2006

The past captured by a photography of conflict

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Dec 10, 2006

Rediscovering a neglected tradition

THE BOOK OF INCENSE, by Kiyoko Morita. Tokyo/New York/London: Kodansha International, 2006, 136 pp., illustrations XX, 1,600 yen (paper) Incense came early to Japan. According to the fifth-century "Nihonshoki" (Chronicles of Japan), a whole aloeswood tree drifted ashore at Awaji. When the fisherfolk...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Dec 3, 2006

Women on top -- where they belong

BAD GIRLS OF JAPAN, edited by Laura Miller and Jan Bardsley. New York: Palmgrave/Macmillan, 2005, 222 pp., photos XI, $26.95 (paper) What makes a "bad girl" bad? -- that is the question posed in this book. "The answer is that badness is attributed to such females by a sexist and male-dominated society...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Nov 26, 2006

The persistence of culture

KYOTO: A Cultural Sojourn, photos by Gorazd Vilhar, text by Charlotte Anderson. Tokyo: IBC Publishing, 2006, 116 pp., profusely illustrated, 2,800 yen (cloth). The final plate in this exceptionally gorgeous photo collection is the jagged, mirrored facade of Kyoto Station, a structure so spectacularly...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Oct 1, 2006

Plain excitement of the Furin Kazan

THE SAMURAI BANNER OF FURIN KAZAN by Yasushi Inoue, translated with a foreword and epilogue by Yoko Riley. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2006, 210 pp., $14.95 (paper). Yasushi Inoue (1907-1991) was one of Japan's finest historical novelists. Works such as "Lou-lan," "Tun-huang" and "The Roof Tile of Tempyo"...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Sep 24, 2006

Monkey business can be serious literature

MONKEY by Wu Cheng-en, translated by Arthur Waley. London: Penguin Books, 2006, 352 pp., £9.99 (paper). After many years out of print, this famous translation, originally published in 1942, is this autumn back in the bookstores. It is a partial rendering of a 16th-century Chinese classic text, otherwise...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Sep 17, 2006

Monsters out of the closet

MILLENNIAL MONSTERS: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination, by Anne Allison, foreword by Gary Cross. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, 332 pp., 48 b/w photos, $24.95 (paper). When I was a child, toys from Japan were kept in the cheapest bins of Woolworth's and Newberry's. Sparkler-wheels...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Sep 10, 2006

Demon swordplay

THE DEMON'S SERMON ON THE MARTIAL ARTS by Issai Chozanshi, translated by William Scott Wilson. Tokyo/New York: Kodansha International, 222 pp., with b/w illustrations, 2006, 2,000 yen (cloth). Early on, Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645), perhaps Japan's greatest martial artist, was complaining about the commercialization...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Sep 3, 2006

Japanese beauty doesn't come easily

BEAUTY UP: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics, by Laura Miller. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, 256 pp., $21.95 (paper). Beauty is big business. In Japan there are more people working in the beauty business than there are in wedding and funeral services, auto repair and software...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Aug 27, 2006

Korean voices from Japan's colonial past

HIDDEN TREASURES: Lives of First-Generation Korean Women in Japan, by Jackie J. Kim, introduction by Sonia Ryang. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2005, 240 pp., with b/w photos, $32.95 (paper). Jackie Kim, an unaffiliated freelance writer, has here compiled the oral histories of 10 first-generation...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Aug 20, 2006

The unique voice of Ryunosuke Akutagawa

RASHOMON AND SEVENTEEN OTHER STORIES, by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, translated by Jay Rubin, introduction by Haruki Murakami. London: Penguin Classics, 2006, 268 pp., £9.99 (paper). In what is still the finest assessment of Ryunosuke Akutagawa's life and work, Howard Hibbett complained that for most,...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Aug 13, 2006

Painting a religion

ZEN MIND/ZEN BRUSH by John Stevens, introductory essay by Claire Pollard, forewords by Edmund Capon and Kurt A. Gitter. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2006, 144 pp., 78 plates, A$35 (paper). Zenga (Zen painting) usually designates the pictures and calligraphy of the monks of the Edo Period (1600-1868)....

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Aug 6, 2006

Japan's baroque theater

KABUKI: Baroque Fusion of the Arts, by Toshio Kawatake, translated by Frank and Jean Connell Hoff. I-House Press, 2006, 358 pp. with 78 illustrations, 1,905 yen (paper). This is the new enlarged and revised edition of an important book on the Kabuki, originally published by the University of Tokyo Press...

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