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The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

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Donald Richie is someone who always floated on the periphery of my awareness. When I went to Japan for the first time, my first feelings and observations were already captured in Richie's writings 40 years before. He recorded for the first time what we all fell for the first time. He was Gaijin Prime, the one who came, and stayed, and made a life.

Leafing through this book, and encountering Richie's acquaintances a couple hundred pages apart, as he experienced them a few decades apart, you get the benefit of this long view, the way experiences echo back and forth across the years. The value of writing down things you want to remember becomes oh so clear. Richie has had an extraordinarily rich life, but perhaps that is because he has taken time to pen his thoughts. He had a remarkable range of acquaintances, and the book is filled with mundane glimpses into the lives of fame and accomplishment. But more than those glimpses of celebrity, I love Richie's eye for the changes and subtleties of daily life: the homeless, the protitutes, the policemen in the park, and the rude youth on their cell phones.

Perhaps we all enjoy similar riches, and would know it, if we stopped to capture them.

I have only known Donal Richie as a film scholar having admired his commentaries on Bresson and Ozu DVDs. Naturally, I bacame interested in the man himself who continues to live in Japan. In this journal, he meets such notables as Kawabata, Kurosawa, Takemitsu, but what is more interesting is his interaction and friendship with regular people. Mr. Richie goes to a park in Tokyo (his usual hang out) and talks to a homeless, gives him his hamburger. He also befriends local prostitutes while he is also a guest of honor at emperors's palace. What is unique about this journal is that he tells as it is. Unlike some autobiography, Mr. Richie does not try to convince readers, does not explain, does not try to defend his actions, or does not offer advice. He simply dscribes his observation both his own personal life and what he sees and happens to him living in Japan as it moves from war destruction to economic bubble, and to decay.

Writer Donald Ritchie, an expert on Japanese film and a keen observer of that interesting country, has distilled nearly sixty years of life as an expatriate into these fascinating journals. Ritchie emerges as a deep thinker and lover of high culture who derives equal satisfaction from indulging his "taste for the mud" (it sounds much more poetic in French), which takes him to sex clubs, prostitutes, and other similarly disreputable places for which he holds a healthy admiration. His endless curiosity about matters and people both high and low is a strong point of this book, providing a well-rounded portrait of both a society and a man's life.

I enjoyed seeing Japan through Ritchie's eyes from his first days in the country during the American occupation up through the years of reconstruction, the boom years of the 80s, and the bursting of the bubble. He notes the many changes in the people and is quite honest about his own feelings concerning his privileged position as a foreigner, never fully accepted but also not subject to the same severe social strictures to which Japanese hold each other. Among the many highlights of this fine book are the long train trip across the country that Ritchie takes during the days of the occupation, his friendship with Yukio Mishima as well as many other distinguished people, and his closely observed opinions on the evolution of Japan's stance toward the foreigner. A fine read, particularly recommended to those with an interest in Japan.

What a life lived. For almost sixty years, Richie, born and raised in Ohio, watched one of the most fascinating countries in the world, Japan, change from a defeated enemy to a global powerhouse. As a writer, he had the wisdom in his youth to begin keeping detailed journals of his thoughts and adventures in Tokyo and beyond. Unlike many of my journal entries, Richie's are beautifully written and thoughtful, and the people he met and the insights he provides on Japan make for good reading. Although some of the journal entries are truly gems, others can be dull, if not too personal. It was in search for Richie's telling observations regarding Japan and its people that compelled me to continue reading. I would recommend this book for those who are knowledgeable of Japan, its people, language and history. Without such background, the book would not be as interesting. Overall, though, this is a good book by a man who lived life the way he wanted to and lived to write about it.

Japan Journals 1947-2005 covers the more than fifty years Donald Richie spent living in Japan. Seeing Japan in defeat on his arrival with the American occupation forces, Richie stayed on and witnessed the rebuilding of the 1960's, the economic peaks of the 1980's and the sobering recessions of more recent years. During that time Richie became a renowned film critic, a valued commentator on Japanese culture and a prodigious author of more than forty books. These journals are full of interesting anecdotes about the Japanese, both Richie's famous and not so famous friends. For me the most interesting is Tano Hiroaki who enters the story as a student and becomes a wealthy business man without really changing very much. There are also the famous Western visitors Richie escorted during their visits to Japan. For me the most interesting is Lincoln Kirstein though there are lots to choose from. The personal glimpses of Richie as he defines life and love in a culture so different from the one he left are perhaps the most captivating aspect of the journals. Richie's easy manner and honesty about himself and others are very engaging. Anyone interested in Japan, literature or life will find Japan Journals a worthwhile read.

The Japan Journals 1947-2004 is the memoir of Donald Richie, a leading Western authority on Japanese film, who resided for more than fifty years in Japan. His eyewitness testimony of Japan's transformation from the ruin of the second world war to a cultural and economic powerhouse leaps off the pages day by day in his journal entries. Some entries are only a couple paragraphs long; others are pages long. A skillfully edited firsthand account painting an unforgettable picture of one man's life in an evolving country, his experiences unfolding bit by bit.

Donald Richie's JAPAN JOURNALS give us an insightful refreshing collection of anecdotes from long roster of "who's who" of post WWII Japan. Coming to Japan to take a journalist job for the US Army's Stars and Stripes, the author found his niche as an observer of the Japanese. He was the first foreign writer to bring the art of Japanese Cinema to the attention of the west. In the intervening 50+ years of living in and writing about Japan, he was able to get to know many of Japan's most creative individuals, but he has waited until now to share his personal stories.

Keeping several types of journals over the past 50 years, Donald Richie melded his observations into many published works: collections of biographical sketches, descriptions of the country and society, sophisticated critiques of Japanese film and even some entertaining novels. With THE JAPAN JOURNALS 1947-2004, he dishes a little more of the inside stories and gets more personal. Ms. Lowitz's intelligent editing prevents overlapping previously published works, and her own comments are well-wrought.

Ah, Donald Richie, you certainly lived an interesting life. Fleeing your small-town prison, arriving during the war as an occupier, you found in Japan the freedom of an outsider, one for whom the usual rules of society do not apply, one where your appetites could be satisfied. Friend to the famous and infamous, there is a "Forrest Gump" quality to your life story. If there was some mover-and-shaker in the Japanese art world, then you where there. (Mishima Yukio, Kurosawa Akira, Susan Sontag, Ozu Yasojiro, Kawabata Yasunari, Francis Ford Coppola...these are but a few of Richie's extensive network of friends and acquaintances.) Familiar with both the high and low, you are equally at home in the brothels (often) and the Emperor's palace (once).

Beginning in 1947, "Japan Journals" is Richie's intermittent diary of his life, thoughts and the events around him. It paints an effective portrait of war-torn and devastated Tokyo, of the rift between the occupying US forces and the local Japanese with whom they were forbidden to talk. Here, Richie discovered the things that were to be his passion and his life's work. Japanese film was the foundation of his career, beginning as a reviewer for the occupier's newspaper "The Pacific Stars and Stripes." From there, a journalist, chronicler and observer for the island nation of Japan.

Richie's writing is reserved and intelligent, commanding an intimacy with the reader, bringing you in like a confidant. He is usually considered a writer on Japan, but he is really a writer on himself. He observes himself observing Japan, and this is the wisdom that he imparts. An admirer of diarist Andre Gide, his journals attempt to emulate his achievements and become a work of literature in and of themselves. It a marked contrast to Joseph Campbell's "Sake & Satori: Asian Journals, Japan" which is largely a collection of daily data, meals and such.

Knowing that they were being written for publication, the "Japan Journals" have been self-edited and combed through, removing the chaff and leaving the wheat. Some of this has been collected into not-included appendixes, such as "The Persian Journals," "Excluded Pages" and the tantalizing "Vitas Sexualis." Yes, the much anticipated "naughty bits" have been almost fully removed, on the advice of a friend. However, these is enough of a glimmer to give you an idea of what he has been up to, in the late night Ueno Park. But like any good erotica, the forbidden nature of the "Vitas Sexualis" has one longing for its publication.

Unfortunately, like many of his generation, such as Edward Seidensticker and Alex Kerr, Donald Richie does not like the changes that he has seen in Japan over the years, and the book ends on a bitter note. However, Richie alone acknowledges that this bitterness is of his own making, as his beloved third world country, full of innocence and naive, open sexuality, transformed into a first world country with accompanying cynicism and coldness.

Anyone interested in Japan, or just interested in good writing, should experience Donald Richie. He is a unique and valuable writer. "Japan Journals" is one of his major works, full of insight, history and experience. Anyone interested in Donald Richie should read "Japan Journals."

I usually start reading diaries with a sense of excitement, an eagerness for revelation, life revealed in the small changes and observations over time. But I am often disappointed. Not with Richie. Detailed, poetic, observant and honest--he makes me laugh and cry. Here is the shape of life--youth, sex, love, change, aging, death--as it is too rarely depicted--full of magic and awe even in the banal. Even if you have no interest in Japan, or in film, you will like this book because of what it shows us about life.

Deeply insightful and elegantly written, Donald Richie's books deserve a place on the shelf of everyone interested discovering a Japan seen through the eyes of a brilliant and sympathetic observer immersed in the culture.