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:

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Nov 28, 2000

Miserable every step of the way

REDISCOVERING NATSUME SOSEKI, with the first English translation of "Travels in Manchuria and Korea." Introduction and translation by Inger Sigrun Brodey and Sammy I. Tsunematsu. Folkestone, Kent: Global Books, 2000, 155 pp., 24 b/w plates, 2,950 yen. In the autumn of 1909, Natsume Soseki, already a well-known author in Japan, was invited to tour Manchuria and Korea. The invitation was extended by the South Manchurian Railway Company, the president of which was an old school friend. The company picked up all expenses, and the Asahi Shimbun, which published Soseki, encouraged the project. The young railway would profit by association with the author's name, the newspaper would sell more copies when the results were published, and government policy would be gratified.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Nov 21, 2000

Glimpses of long-lost Tokyo

MY ASAKUSA: Coming of Age in Prewar Tokyo. A Memoir, by Sadako Sawamura, translated by Norman E. Stafford and Yasuhiro Kawamura, with an author's note and a foreword by Taichi Yamada. Boston/Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2000, 270 pp., $16.95 Sadako Sawamura was one of Japan's leading character actresses. Though she often performed on stage, she is best remembered for her movie roles -- Naruse's 1954 "Late Chrysanthemums," Ozu's 1960 "Late Autumn." Plain yet cultivated, she specialized in traditional roles -- the older geisha, the worldly aunt, the "okamisan" at the elegant eatery.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Nov 15, 2000

Timeless tales reflect the times

SANSHO DAYU, by Dudley Andrew & Carole Cavanaugh. BFI Film Classic Series. London: British Film Institute, 2000, 80 pp., with b/w illustrations, $20. Kenji Mizoguchi's 1954 film, "Sansho Dayu" (Sansho the Bailiff), is based upon the well-known 1915 Ogai Mori narrative, which was in turn taken from a folk tale of some antiquity. In all versions, the basic anecdote remains the same, although the tale varies with the teller.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Nov 7, 2000

No chippie off the old block

WOODBLOCK KUCHI-E PRINTS: Reflections of Meiji Culture, by Helen Merrit and Nanako Yamada. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000, 284 pp., profusely illustrated, $65. That category of woodblock print called the "kuchi-e" has not been widely investigated. In the large bibliography that concludes this interesting study of the genre, only two or three titles refer to it.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Oct 31, 2000

Speechless, but never silent

JAPANESE BEYOND WORDS: How to Walk and Talk like a Native Speaker, by Andrew Horvat. Foreword by Jan Walls. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2000, 176 pp., $14.95. As Jan Walls says in his foreword to this instructive and entertaining book, Andrew Horvat provides "a new way of looking at language . . . a guide to communicative competence based upon a holistic view wherein communication is seen as a combination of speech and behavior."

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Oct 9, 2000

Japan shattered stereotypes in the '60s

ANGURA: Posters of the Japanese Avant-Garde, by David G. Goodman, with a foreword by Ellen Lupton. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999, 92 pp., 90 color plates, 17 b/w, $19.95. The 1960s was a time of extraordinary creativity in the arts in Tokyo. As Alexandra Munroe has said, it was "undoubtedly the most creative outburst of anarchistic, subversive and riotous tendencies in the history of modern Japanese culture."

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Oct 3, 2000

Diners, look before you eat

AT THE JAPANESE TABLE, by Richard Hosking. Images of Asia. Oxford University Press, 2000, 70 pp., 22 color plates, 19 b/w, unpriced. THE ESSENCE OF JAPANESE CUISINE: An Essay on Food and Culture, by Michael Ashkenazi and Jeanne Jacob. Richmond/Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000, 252 pp., 11 b/w photos, 45 British pounds. Japanese cuisine is, as we often hear, unique. Bruno Taut early noted that "the appetite of the Japanese is aroused principally through appeal to the optic nerve." Later, Roland Barthes stated that the Japanese meal was primarily a palette: "These trays fulfill the definition of painting." And recently Rudolph Arnhem told us just what kind of paintings: "The range and delicacy of Japanese sensibility is displayed in colors suggesting Impressionist painting."

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Sep 26, 2000

Welcome return of four classics

THE IZU DANCER, by Yasunari Kawabata, translated by Edward Seidensticker. THE COUNTERFEITER; OBASUTE; THE FULL MOON, by Yasushi Inoue, translated by Leon Picon. Singapore, Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 2000, 144 pp., $14.95. Here is a new, reset quality-paperback edition of one of the staples of modern Japanese literature. It is a product of Tuttle's admirable refurbishing of its invaluable backlist of modern Japanese fiction.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Sep 19, 2000

Laos' fractured human map

LAO HILL TRIBES: Traditions and Patterns of Existence, by Stephen Mansfield. Images of Asia: Oxford University Press, 2000. 120 pp., 21 color plates, 24 monochrome, unpriced. In a sense, Laos remains closer to a conglomeration of tribes than it does to a conventional state composed of a unified people. It is for this reason that the Laotian government is intent on making the upland tribes aware of themselves as part of a nation, to transfer their allegiances from the villages to the nation.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Sep 15, 2000

Ever-unfashionable Akutagawa

JAPANESE SHORT STORIES, by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, translated by Takashi Kojima, foreword by John McVittie. Singapore: Tuttle Publishing, 1981, 240 pp. with 15 illustrations, $14.95. THE ESSENTIAL AKUTAGAWA, by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, edited by Seiji Lippit, foreword by Jorge Luis Borges. New York: Marsililio Publishers, 208 pp., $14.95. Ryunosuke Akutagawa remains something of a literary anomaly. A major stylist, he is denied the established standing of a Natsume Soseki or a Shiga Naoya. Instead, he is relegated to the role of eccentric, a minor symbolist who wrote a few popular pieces.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Sep 5, 2000

Making love is making freedom

TABOU: Scenario, by Nagisa Oshima. Traduit du japonais par Nathalie Cazier et Katsuko Tsuchiya. Paris: Petite bibliotheque des Cahiers du Cinema, 2000, 144 pp., FFr69. This is a bilingual edition (French and Japanese, printed back to back) of Nagisa Oshima's scenario for the film "Gohatto," which was released both in Japan and abroad earlier this year. The title refers to the penal codes that codified the actions of the Shinsengumi, that ad hoc army devoted to supporting the Tokugawa shogunate during the last days of the Edo era.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Aug 29, 2000

Beer, blisters and the Tokaido

REDISCOVERING THE OLD TOKAIDO: In the Footsteps of Hiroshige, by Patrick Carey. Folkestone: Global Oriental, 148 pp. and 54 color plates, 16.50 British pounds. Retracing notable footprints is a noble enterprise, and various are the pilgrimages, religious, literary or otherwise. In Japan, retaking known paths is something of an avocation and many a courtly romance finds a ramble dignified if it has the illustrious precedence of some prince or poet.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Aug 22, 2000

Soseki never dreamed of this

TEN NIGHTS' DREAMS, by Natsume Soseki. Translated by Takumi Kashima, Kyoko Nonaka, Hideki Oiwa, Horikatsu Kawashima and Katsunori Fujioka. London: Soseki Museum in London, 2000. 64 pp., unpriced. In 1908, and already an established popular writer, Natsume Soseki turned to more experimental forms of expression. Among these was his accounting of 10 dreams he had purportedly experienced. All are fairly dark. One finds a man killing pigs on the edge of a cliff over which he eventually tumbles; another is about a man being ridden by a blind child who turns out to be the son he killed -- at once his descendant and his ancestor.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Aug 16, 2000

May this force be with you

THE MYSTERIOUS POWER OF KI: The Force Within, by Kouzo Kaku, translated by Roger Machin and Mami Nakamura. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental, 2000, 154 pp., with b/w photographs, 14.95 British pounds. Despite the title of this book, there is nothing mysterious about "ki." It is a concept popularly used in traditional psychology. Meaning variously "mind," "heart" and "spirit," it, like the equally vague "kokoro," postulates a quality that accounts for observed phenomena.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Aug 8, 2000

Japan: everything and more

THE MIKADO'S EMPIRE: A History of Japan from the Mythological Age to the Meiji Era, by William Elliot Griffis. A facsimile printing of the 1895 edition. New York, Tokyo, Osaka & London: ICG Muse, Inc. 2000, 462 pp., 1,300 yen. William Elliot Griffis, educator and clergyman, first came to Japan in 1870. Like Lafcadio Hearn, he was originally sent to the provinces (Fukui), but after less than a year had made his way back to Tokyo Imperial University, where he gathered materials for what would become his major work, his history of the "Mikado's" empire. It was published in 1876 and is thus among the first outside books on the country. It was quite popular: By 1912, it had gone through 12 editions. The volume under review is a facsimile of the 1895 eighth edition -- minus the illustrations. Long out of print, it is as instructive as it ever was.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Aug 1, 2000

First glimpses of the West

THE SATSUMA STUDENTS IN BRITAIN: Japan's Early Search for the "Essence of the West," by Andrew Cobbing. Japan Library: Curzon Press, 2000, 201 pp., with maps and 11 b/w photos, unpriced. On a summer morning in 1865, the steamship Delhi dropped anchor in Southampton. On board were 17 young students from Satsuma, who had come to England in quest of the "essence of the West." Actually, there were 19 of them, but since the other two were not from Satsuma (they came, respectively, from Tosa and Nagasaki) they were left out of the official accounting, devoted as it was to "the Spirit of Young Satsuma." Thus, from the very first, the quest was to harbor parochial interests, and the group soon dispersed in various directions.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jul 25, 2000

Fenollosa's study of art is art

EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART, by Ernest F. Fenollosa. A facsimile of the 1913 edition. New York, Tokyo, Osaka: ICG Muse, Inc. 440 pp., with original plates, 2,100 yen. Ernest Fenollosa, the man who taught the West about traditional Japanese art, first came to Japan in 1878, when he was invited to teach philosophy and political economy at Tokyo University. In 1886, he resigned and accepted a contract with the Ministry of Education and the Imperial household. That left him with more time to follow his real interest -- saving Japanese art.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jul 4, 2000

Japan searches for itself and finds 'Genji'

YOSANO AKIKO AND "THE TALE OF THE GENJI," by G.G. Rowley. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 2000, 222 pp., $32.95. There seems to be something of a "Genji" frenzy going on right now. Liza Dalby has the author writing her memoirs in her new book, "The Tale of Murasaki"; Ichinohe Saeko has a full-length modern-dance version in the works; Tomita Isao has written a "Genji" symphony; and and Miki Minoru has composed a three-hour "Genji" opera.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jun 27, 2000

Art, enlightenment and empire

THE IDEALS OF THE EAST, by Okakura Kakuzo. Tokyo: ICG Muse Inc., 2000, 250 pp., 1,300 yen.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jun 20, 2000

Po Chu-i's eternal pleasures

PO CHU-I: Selected Poems. Translated by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, 172 pp., unpriced. When he died at the age of 75 in 846, Po Chu-i left behind a legacy of some 2,800 poems. A civil servant, he early on wrote poetry critical of authority and was consequently demoted to the provinces. There he had the leisure to undertake serious religious study, particularly Ch'an, Zen-style meditation, and to write the poems for which he is now remembered.

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