Donald Richie - The Japan Times

Today's print edition

Subscribe for more access

Meta

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

Feb 19, 2006

Women writers opened window on Heian life

OBJECTS OF DISCOURSE: Memoirs of Women of Heian Japan, by John R. Wallace. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2005, 326 pp., with VII illustrations, $65 (cloth). The four major court memoirs written in the late 10th and early 11th century are the "Kagero nikki" (translated by Edward Seidensticker as "The Gossamer Years"), the "Izumi Shikibu nikki" (Lady Izumi's Story), the "Murasaki Shikibu nikki" (Lady Murasaki's Journal), and the "Sarashina nikki" (The Sarashina Memoir).

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Feb 12, 2006

Still life on a moving train

SUBWAY LOVE, photos by Nobuyoshi Araki with an interview (bilingual: English/Japanese), art direction by Toshine Ishihama. Tokyo: IBC Publishing, 2005, 226 pp., over 200 b/w images, 3,200 yen (paper). Between 1963 and 1972, photographer Nobuyoshi Araki took the subway to work. Always with his cameras, even back then, he began to take pictures of those who sat opposite him.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Feb 5, 2006

Frightening, yet beautiful: ghosts, ghouls and monsters

YOSHITOSHI'S STRANGE TALES by John Stevenson. Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2005, 160 pp., 71 full-page prints and 25 illustrations, 2005, $95 (cloth). Another beautiful edition de luxe from Hotei Publishing, this volume presents two series by Taiso Yoshitoshi (1839-1892), a late print artist often remembered for his fantastic images.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jan 29, 2006

A reliquary for the story of Buddha

BUDDHISM: On the Path to Nirvana, by Swati Chopra, foreword by Lokesh Chandra, photo editor Lance Dane. New Delhi: Brijbasi Art Press, Ltd., 2005, 160 pp., 200 color photos, $35 (cloth). The true accomplishments of any leader are often compromised when legend wraps itself around the man himself. This is particularly true when the accomplishments of religious leaders are considered. The mythic trappings become as though unavoidable and the man himself often disappears beneath them.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jan 22, 2006

The new Japanese woman, from virginity to menopause

INSIDE AND OTHER SHORT FICTION: Japanese Women by Japanese Women, compiled by Cathy Layne, foreword by Ruth Ozeki. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2006. 237 pp., 2,400 yen (cloth). As Ruth Ozeki writes in her foreword to this very interesting collection of new writing: "Japanese society is undergoing radical change. The traditional family . . . is breaking down. Marriage and birthrates are declining, while the divorce rate is escalating."

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jan 15, 2006

Spreading the word on popular literature

THE BAMBOO SWORD AND OTHER SAMURAI TALES by Shuhei Fujisawa, translated by Gavin Frew. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2005, 254 pp., 2,400 yen (cloth). Japanese critics have long made a distinction between taishu bungaku, "popular literature," which is simple entertainment, and jun bungaku, "pure literature," which is "serious" and aspires to art.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jan 8, 2006

Resurrection of 47 masterless samurai

KUNIYOSHI: The Faithful Samurai, by David R. Weinberg, translations and essay by Alfred H. Marks, Foreword by B.W. Robinson. Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2005, 192 pp., map, pictures, color plates. 39.50 euro (paper). This is the paperback edition (first published in 2000) of one of the most interesting of the many finely designed portfolios published by the Dutch publishing house Hotei. It is devoted to the portraits of 47 loyal masterless samurai or ronin.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Dec 25, 2005

Cultural depths of celluloid

READING A JAPANESE FILM: Cinema in Context, by Keiko I. McDonald. Honolulu: Hawai'i University Press, 2005, 294 pp., photo illustrations. $20.00 (paper). Films are not only to be passively watched, they are also to be actively "read." The viewer deciphers not just the story but all the other indications of the director's intent -- script inclusions and elisions, camera movements, editing. Only after this has been done can the full import of the film become apparent.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Dec 4, 2005

Between life and death stands culture

FINAL DAYS: Japanese Culture and Choice at the End of Life, by Susan Orpett Long. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005, 288 pp., $45 (cloth). This book asks how the final days might be different for Japanese patients and for those in the United States. Both Japanese and Americans state that they want to die peacefully at home surrounded by loved ones. Yet, in both countries, most people die in hospitals surrounded by medical equipment and the staff that run it.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Nov 27, 2005

The Indianapolis Museum of Art takes some tradition back to Japan

JAPANESE MASTERWORKS: Paintings From the Indianapolis Museum of Art; edited by Heisaku Harada and John Tadao Teramoto; foreword by Anthony Hirschel; introduction by Christine M.E. Guth; and essays by Tae Nishida, Shiji Hashimoto, Takeshi Nagai and Yumiko Kuniga. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005, 228 pp., 160 color illustrations, map, text in English and Japanese, $40.00 (cloth). This is the illustrated bilingual catalog for the showings of Japanese paintings from the Indianapolis Museum of Art collection, which were held at museums in Ehime, Shiga and Tochiki, ending their tour in Fukuoka last July. These showings were also a homecoming for the paintings, none of them having been seen in Japan since their acquisitions.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Nov 20, 2005

Words of war, peace and the future

THE THOUGHT WAR: Japanese Imperial Propaganda, by Barak Kushner. Honolulu: The University of Hawai'i Press, 2006, 244 pp., $45.00 (cloth). This completely individual and very interesting account of the uses of propaganda in Japan concludes with the observation that it would be historically naive to pretend that Japan had changed overnight after its defeat in World War II. After all, Japan has had a very long history of socially mobilizing its people.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Nov 13, 2005

On the edge and out of our seats

UNSPEAKABLE ACTS: The Avant-garde Theatre of Terayama Shuji and Postwar Japan, by Carol Fischer Sorgenfrei. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005, 340 pp. with illustrations, $45.00 (cloth). Shuji Terayama (1936-1983) remains one of Japan's most intriguing modern writers. Playwright, novelist, scriptwriter, critic, essayist, poet and filmmaker, he was also a spokesman for his times. When the glorious ferment of the 1960s is recalled, it is Terayama who is remembered.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Nov 6, 2005

The dangerous liaisons of ambassadors to China

AMBASSADORS FROM THE ISLANDS OF IMMORTALS: China-Japan Relations in the Han-Tang Period, by Wang Zhenping. Honolulu: Association for Asian Studies/University of Hawai'i Press, 2005, 388 pp., with illustrations, $53.00 (cloth). Relations between Japan and China may be troubled right now, but then they often have been. Back at the beginning, Chinese rulers saw the whole world as coming under their jurisdiction. "Under the wide heaven," as one Chinese saying had it, "all is the King's land; within the sea-boundaries of the land, all are the King's servants."

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Oct 30, 2005

The freedom found in anominity

A MAN WITH NO TALENTS: Memoirs of a Tokyo Day Laborer, by Shiro Oyama, translated by Edward Fowler. Ithica/London: Cornell University Press, 2005, 140 pp., $21.00 (cloth). Toward the end of his account of what life is like at the bottom of Japan's social structure, Shiro Oyama (a pseudonym) observes that, during his 15 years as a day laborer, he has "never beheld the kind of lofty or beautiful human spirit that people somehow expect to witness at the bottom of society." On the contrary, "I have lost count of the men I have run across who embody a veritable trinity of ignorance, meanness, and arrogance."

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Oct 23, 2005

Genghis Khan: Greatest leader or brutal monster?

GENGHIS KHAN: Conqueror of the World, by Leo de Hartog. London/New York: Tauris Parke, 2004, 230 pp., with maps, $12.99 (paper). The warrior who united the Mongol tribes and created an empire that was the largest the world has known, has long defied historians.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Oct 16, 2005

Willam Empson, 'The tale of Genji' and the Westerner's view of Japan

WILLIAM EMPSON: Volume I -- Among the Mandarins, by John Haffenden. Oxford University Press, 2005, 695 pp., 16 illustrations, £30 (cloth). Author of several major critical works, notably "Seven Types of Ambiguity" (1930) and "Some Versions of the Pastoral" (1935), William Empson (1906-1984) was also professor of English literature at Tokyo and Peking.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Oct 9, 2005

Breaking the silence on sexuality in Japan

GENDERS, TRANSGENDERS AND SEXUALITIES IN JAPAN, edited by Mark McLelland and Romit Dasgupta. London: Routledge, 2005, 218 pp., £60 (cloth). Now that the conspiracies of silence have begun to evaporate, scholarly works on gender and transgender have begun to proliferate. This very interesting collection of papers is an example of the fruitful amplification of the field.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Oct 2, 2005

The looking glass of Chinese history

MIRRORING THE PAST: The Writing and Use of History in Imperial China, by On-cho Ng and Q. Edward Wang. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005, 307 pp., $50 (cloth). It was the 19th-century English historian E.A. Freeman who observed that "history is past politics, and politics is present history." This statement was considered so extraordinary that it is found listed in collections of great quotations -- which is where I found it.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Sep 11, 2005

The curious Mr. Longfellow

LONGFELLOW'S TATTOOS: Tourism, Collecting, and Japan, by Christine M.E. Guth. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004, 256 pp., 123 illustrations, $29.95 (paper). After the new Japanese government was officially installed in 1868, only a decade or so after the country had been, more or less, forcibly "opened," the first tourists began appearing.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Sep 4, 2005

For the love of Bollywood

BEHIND THE SCENES OF HINDI CINEMA. Edited by Johan Manschot and Marijke de Vos. With contributions by P.K. Nair, Deepa Gahlot, Gayatri Chatterjee et al. Foreword by Amitabh Bachchan, Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2005, 160 pp., profusely illustrated (cloth). The subtitle of this beautifully produced, lavishly illustrated book is: "A Visual Journey through the Heart of Bollywood." With its comparison to the American film product ("Bollywood"), its implication of a pleasingly emotional ("heart") content, it nicely indicates not only the commercial ambitions of the ordinary Hindi film, but also the scope of this book itself.

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.

[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Things may look perfect to the outside world, but today's mom is fine with some imperfection at home.

How 'Reiwa moms' are reshaping motherhood in Japan

By Mai Yoshikawa

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Live like a lord or lady for a night at Ozu Castle

Live like a lord or lady for a night at Ozu Castle

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER

international-reports