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.

For Donald Richie's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Feb 26, 2002

The other treasures of Angkor

SIEM REAP, Cambodia An enormous complex located on a vast wooded plain, Cambodia's spectacular Angkor was built between the ninth and the 14th centuries by the Khmers as an administrative and religious center. From here, the early Khmer kings ruled over a vast territory that extended from what is now Vietnam across to the Bay of Bengal, and up into China as far as Yunnan. Remaining after the collapse of the Khmers are nearly 300 temples and palaces, some 30 of which have been cleared of forest and can be visited.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Feb 24, 2002

I want my DVD: The word is out on the small screen

Now that our shelves contain a lot more than books -- CD-ROMs, VHS tapes, DVDs -- it is worth reconsidering a question that occasionally interests the resident foreigner: How do you find Japanese films with English subtitles?

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Feb 3, 2002

Sue Sumii looks back on a life well spent

MY LIFE: Living, Loving and Fighting, by Sue Sumii; interviews by Masuda Reiko, translated by the Ashi Translation Society, with an introduction by Livia Monnet. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 108 pp., $29.95 (paper) Sue Sumii (1902-97) is remembered for the multipart novel "The River with No Bridge" (1961-73), which sold more than 4 million copies and made its author famous all over Japan. It is a brave and passionate account of the lives of Japan's proscribed class, the burakumin. Their history is one of enduring the intolerance and bigotry of the citizenry at large -- a history that continues to this day.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jan 27, 2002

Suffering for one's art

BUSHIDO: Legacies of the Japanese Tattoo, by Takahiro Kitamura and Katie M. Kitamura, with photos by Jai Tanju. Atglen, Pa., Schiffer Publishing, 2000. 160 pp., color and b/w plates, $29.95 (paper) In this interesting and beautifully illustrated account of the Japanese tattoo, the authors' intent is to place the subject within a context more culturally meaningful than that usually given it.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jan 20, 2002

Murder and mass suicide? Now that's entertainment

CHUSHINGURA AND THE FLOATING WORLD: The Representation of Kanadehon Chushingura in Ukiyo-e Prints, by David Bell. Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library, 2001. 170 pp. with 41 b/w plates, 45 British pounds (cloth) One spring day in 1701 there was an altercation in Edo Castle. Perceiving insult, a local lord drew his sword, an act considered a capital offense. Ordered to commit suicide he did so, leaving his clan leaderless. On a snowy day at the end of 1702, these ronin (masterless samurai), some 45 of them, marched on the mansion of the man they held responsible, decapitated him and offered his head at the grave of their leader. The Tokugawa government demanded their own mass suicide and this was accomplished in the early spring of 1703, nearly two years after the original offense.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jan 13, 2002

Reassessing Kurosawa's neglected masterpiece

SEVEN SAMURAI: The Film by Akira Kurosawa, by Joan Mellen. London: British Film Institute, 2002, 96 pp., with many b/w photos, 8.99 British pounds (paper) The National Film Theater in London is currently presenting a two-month-long festival featuring the works of Akira Kurosawa. A number of other events are taking place in conjunction with the retrospective, including the publication of this excellent monograph on what is perhaps the director's finest film.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jan 6, 2002

Deconstructing Tokyo

INSIDER'S TOKYO, by Angela Jeffs. Times Books International (Singapore), 2001, 280 pp., with numerous maps and photographs, 2,100 yen (paper) Tokyo must have more foreign-language books devoted to it than any other major city -- not only the guides, which endlessly proliferate, but also serious books about the history of the place, its disposition and its nature. There are Edward Seidensticker's seminal two volumes, Paul Waley's necessary two single volumes, and many more, including one of mine (which I could modestly mention but won't).

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Dec 30, 2001

Rescuing Orientalism from the School of Said

FIGURING THE EAST: Segalen, Malraux, Duras and Barthes, by Marie-Paule Ha. Albany: State University of New York, 2000, 160 pp., $17.95 (paper) In its consideration of the East, the West has been accused of Orientalism, a theory developed by Edward Said to explain the way the West "constructs" the Orient by describing it and then ruling over it. Being Palestinian, Said certainly knows all about the negative side of this process, and consequently he and his followers have stressed the "ruling over" aspect of Orientalism.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Dec 23, 2001

On a slow boat to Bangkok

SLITHERING SOUTH: by Steve Van Beek. Hong Kong: Wind & Water, Inc., 2001. 430 pp. with map and glossary, $11.95. Sliding (or bumping) down the shallow Ping River, the long tributary that joins the Chao Phya and flows through Bangkok, Steve Van Beek pondered his odyssey. Having begun in the river's headwaters near the Burmese border, he had paddled from the still-natural north into the polluted south, rested on his oars midstream and realized that "I was more interested in the journey than in the destination."

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Dec 16, 2001

Japan's maverick monk

LETTING GO: The Story of Zen Master Tosui, translated and with an introduction by Peter Haskel. Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 2001, 168 pp. with woodcuts, $45 (cloth), $19.95 (paper) Tosui Unkei, the beloved and eccentric 17th-century Zen master, was, like Ikkyu Sojin 200 years before him, a decided maverick. He rejected the monastic world for a life among the common folk, and had no respect for the Buddhist church as it then was. Turning his back on abbothood, he hired himself out as a servant, worked as both a palanquin carrier and a pack-horse driver, and later became a beggar, giving the day's proceeds to those even poorer than himself.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Dec 2, 2001

Yosano's poetry in motion

TRAVELS IN MANCHURIA AND MONGOLIA, by Akiko Yosano, translated by Joshua A. Fogel. New York: Columbia University Press, 164 pp., with a map, $39.50 (cloth), $16 (paper) In 1928, the celebrated poet Akiko Yosano was invited to travel through Northeast Asia by the South Manchurian Railway Company.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Nov 25, 2001

When film told it like it was

THE BENSHI -- Japanese Silent Film Narrators, edited by the Friends of Silent Films Association, with essays by Tadao Sato and Larry Greenberg, and an interview with Midori Sawato. Tokyo: Urban Connections, 2001, 172 pp. with photographs, 1,500 yen (paper) Despite its name, no silent film was, of course, ever shown silent. There was always, everywhere, something -- usually music but often some kind of narration as well. Only in one country, however, did the practice of narration turn into a kind of institution. That was in Japan.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Nov 18, 2001

Too much of a good thing

YAKUZA PERFUME, by Akahige Namban. New York: Blue Moon Books, 2001, 206 pp., $7.95 (paper). This curious book is an American-published pornographic novel that purports to be written by a Japanese. Though its main aim is to excite, its interest lies in the cultural assumptions it makes, these rendered suspicious by the presumptions it displays concerning the character of Japanese women.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Nov 11, 2001

Mizoguchi's street of shame

RED-LIGHT DISTRICT, the film by Kenji Mizoguchi, translated and annotated by D.J. Rajakaruna. Colombo: S. Godage & Brothers, 2001. 182 pp., $12.50 (paper) Kenji Mizoguchi's last film, the 1956 "Akasen Chitai" ("Red-Light District," aka "Street of Shame") may not be one of his best pictures but it is one of his most interesting. As D.J. Rajakaruna, who here translates the entire script, writes: "It is not a great film like 'The Life of Oharu' or 'Ugetsu' but (it is) a document of historical and sociological importance."

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Nov 4, 2001

Cities that go with the flow

LEARNING FROM THE JAPANESE CITY: West Meets East in Urban Design, by Barrie Shelton. London: E. and F.N. Spon/Routledge, 2001, 210 pp., profusely illustrated, 42.50 British pounds (cloth) In this interesting study of Japanese urban space, the author writes that when he thinks of the Western city he envisions streets and their patterns of relationship, and dominant centers and peripheral places. But when he thinks of Japanese cities he sees scattered points with no clear inter-relationship and often no clear internal form.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Oct 28, 2001

Absorbing and transforming the new

TRANSLATING THE WEST: Language and Political Reason in Nineteenth-Century Japan, by Douglas R. Howland. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001, 312 pp., $27.95 (paper) It is commonly assumed that Western ideas somehow wafted to Japan and there landed and took root. A moment's reflection, however, reveals this as unlikely. Ideas do not float from one country to another. They are packed, however carelessly, then exported, or imported. The packing material is language.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Oct 21, 2001

Playing to the home crowd

JAPANESE SPORTS: A History, by Allen Guttmann and Lee Thompson. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 310 pp., plates, 25. $50, cloth; $24.95, paper. When Commodore Perry arrived in Japan as an unwelcome guest in 1853, a small part of the initial interactions between the visitors and their reluctant hosts was devoted to sports. The Americans put on an exhibition of boxing and were found to be "scrawny." The Japanese exhibited sumo and the Americans discovered the wrestlers to be "overfed monsters."

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Sep 23, 2001

Arcane lore as taught by the masters

BUDO SECRETS: Teaching of the Martial Arts Masters, by John Stevens. Boston/London: Shambhala, 2001, 116 pp., with illustrations, $19.95 The term "budo" is relatively recent one. After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the martial arts were no longer to be used in combat, but rather to be considered exclusive attainments of the warrior class. "Bujutsu" was replaced by "budo," the implication being that spiritual attainment, not physical victory, was now the goal. When, shortly after, the entire concept of a samurai "class" collapsed, the martial arts were theoretically open to anyone interested.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Sep 16, 2001

A theory in need of updating

THE ANATOMY OF SELF: The Individual Versus Society, by Takeo Doi. Translated by Mark A. Harbison. Forward by Edward Hall. Tokyo: Kodansha, Int., 2001 (1986), 168 pp., 1,800 yen. Takeo Doi, the man who made "amae" a household word, later wrote this book about "omote" and "ura" and their extensions, "tatemae" and "honne." The first of these terms indicates a confident, if indulgent, leaning upon others for support, which Doi has said goes a long way toward defining Japanese character. The latter terms have been elegantly defined by Shuichi Kato in his multivolume "A History of Japanese Literature":

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Sep 9, 2001

New Sensationalism in the city

SHANGHAI, by Riichi Yokomitsu. Translated with a postscript by Dennis Washburn. Center for Japanese Studies, Ann Arbor; University of Michigan Press, 2001. 242 pp., $45 (cloth), $18.95 (paper). Riichi Yokomitsu's first novel, "Shanghai," was published in magazine installments between 1928 and 1931. Based on a short visit to the city in 1928, it concerns a 1925 incident (the so-called May 30th Movement) when Chinese workers at a Japanese spinning mill staged a strike, to the consternation of the resident foreigners.

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