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Following the Brush: An American Encounter with Classical Japanese Culture

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In this collection of essays, John Elder, a professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, explores his observations from a sabbatical in Kyoto, Japan. He discusses everything from Japanese calligraphy to haiku to Zen to whalemeat, and even for the uninitiated, he makes these aspects of Japanese culture accessible. His observations carry some real depth, too: he looks well beyond a tourist's superficial awe, well beyond an academic's obsession with paradigm. In these essays Elder discovers what it is about bonsai trees, for example, that makes them uniquely Japanese, and he is able to articulate what their prevalence says about Japan's relationship to nature. Without idealizing Japan, he leaves the reader with a greatly deepened understanding of a distinctly eastern view toward the natural world, and perhaps provides us--both Japanese and American--with new ways of seeing our human relationship to the environment. This is an ambitious book, and a highly successful one. I recommend it enthusiastically!