It appears that when the Japanologist Alex Kerr was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, his tutors despaired at his unorthodox use of his time there, with one particularly testy don complaining, "He researches only the ephemera that draw his interest," going on to rail against Kerr's fascination with "superstitions, myths and oddities."
Another Kyoto, by Alex Kerr with Kathy Arlyn Sokol.336 pagesSEKAI BUNKA PUBLISHING, Nonfiction.
The tutor's final word on this non-scholastic approach to research was that his young charge "waves these peculiar interpretations around as if they were sparklers." In Kerr's latest work, from which these anecdotes were taken, we get plenty of sparklers, small but telling illuminations into whatever engages the author's curiosity. For this we must be grateful.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.