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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A personal journey, not a textbook,
By
This review is from: The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto (Paperback)
I bought this book used last summer and filed it away on a bookshelf, and finally picked it up two days ago. Even though these days, I read through most books slowly, I was sucked into Iyer's Kyoto world, and plowed through the book in two very enjoyable sessions.I was baffled to read some of the criticisms readers at Amazon gave this book. I found the accusations that Iyer is condescending to be the most perplexing. I've read lots of travel writing, and have found that many travel writers spend most of their time analyzing their chosen destination with a God-like impersonal analysis of the place's foibles that certainly does often come across as arrogant or ignorant. What struck me about this book was how much Iyer does *not* do this. He certainly spends a lot of time analyzing and trying to figure out both Japan and the people he encounters there, but he is no more critical of others than he is of himself, no more critical of Japan than of his own culture(s). He does not watch from a distance, but participates in what he writes about, from interacting with 'The Lady' to dipping his foot into the waters of a monk's life, and exposes his own floundering. He criticizes not only that which he participates in, but also his own foibles and inability to realize the rigor and discipline of Zen, his own inability to understand Sachiko and give her what she needs and wants. I came away from the book seeing Sachiko *not* as someone who is helpless or hapless, but rather, as someone who, like all of us, struggles between dreams and duties. Yet unlike most of us, Sachiko taps into a well of deep inner strength and vision and breaks through the restrictions of her cultural conditioning to realize her dreams. I thought Sachiko came across as much stronger, with more grace and understanding, than Iyer, who often is reduced to clumsy assurances as he tries to fathom her rich inner world. Yet this is not to say that Iyer comes across poorly, but rather that he comes across as an honest and likable narrator unafraid to expose the personal hues and struggles of his journey. The analysis of Japan and the people he meets in which Pico engages is a usual feature of travel writing, and as always, his analysis may or may not be accurate. But unlike many travel writers, he exposes his own biases and inaccurate perceptions often by comparing his idealized visions of Japan to the idealized visions of others about other cultures. He clearly shows how his preferences shape his experience, instead of presenting snippets of literature or cultural observation as if they were gleaned from an impersonal textbook about Japan. This is a very personal experience, and I find Pico to be a very warm, likable, and human narrator, whose personal sense of magic and wonder fills this book and transports the reader.
24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Englishman's exploration of what it is to be Japanese,
By
This review is from: The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto (Paperback)
Subtitled "Four Seasons in Kyoto", this 1992 book by the British travel writer, Pico Iyer, is more than just a book about a place. Mr. Iyer spent a year in Kyoto to learn about Zen as well as Japan. Along the way he met a very special woman, Sachiko, and learned more about the essence of being Japanese than he ever expected. I was particularly interested in this book because I have a wonderful Japanese daughter-in-law and have been to Japan myself. I remember the few days we spent in Kyoto with fond recollections and smiled at the author's vivid descriptions. I also found myself nodding in agreement at some of the discoveries he made about Sachiko and her way of thinking as I, too, have had my eyes opened in similar ways.Mr. Iyer has the ability to paint a complex portrait in words. I found myself sharing his discoveries, from his experiences in the temples to the very modern music clubs. The center of the book, however, is Sachiko. She's 30 years old, the mother of two children and married to a Japanese businessman who spends 18 or more hours a day at work. She speaks English with difficulty but has read a lot of classic literature and is also an aficionado of a wide variety of pop music icons. In spite of her traditional upbringing, she yearns for a larger life, beyond the confines of her home. Mr. Iyer becomes her friend and they do a lot of sightseeing together. She's free all day and so is he, which makes their friendship easy. Some of the most interesting scenes are when he tries to speak Japanese and she tries to speak English and misunderstandings follow, both because of the language itself and also because of different ways of thinking. I'm a romantic and fully expected their relationship to blossom into an intimate one, but Mr. Iyer is so evasive that even though they do become very close, he avoids those kinds of topics. Instead, he focuses on what he perceives to be her feelings and his growing understanding of her. It seems a little strange to me that only in the later part of the book did he drop a gentle hint that their relationship was a bit more than that of just friends. But even then, I never was sure. This is a great travelogue. I not only learned a lot but also recognized things I have come to understand about the Japanese character. There are long sections about literature, both Japanese and Western, which I found to be boring. And the relationship between Iyer and Sachiko left me annoyed. But for a unique picture of Kyoto and a deeper understanding of the cross-cultural differences between Japanese and Westerners, I do give it a definite recommendation.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Lady and the Foreigner: 2 Reactions,
By
This review is from: The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto (Paperback)
I have two responses to this well-written travel narrative. First, I greatly enjoyed Iyer's observations and thoughts about contemporary Japan. Even though the book was published in 1991, much of it still seems accurate to me, someone who has traveled to Japan three times. Iyer, is a very good travel writer, one who is neither acerbic in the manner of, say, Paul Theroux, nor prone to the gauzy romanticism one sometimes encounters in western responses to Japan (like Cathy Davidson's "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji"). He is alert to subtleties of culture and behavior that most travelers would never notice. So that's what I liked about "The Lady and the Monk."
On the other hand, the account of his relationship with Sachiko, the Japanese woman who longs to break free from her constrained life by cultivating relationships with foreigners, does not wear as well over the almost two decades that divide his experiences from the present. It seems dated and (since it is interwoven throughout the text) ultimately a little tiresome. Iyer's decision to render Sachiko's awkward English as he heard it (as opposed to conveying what she was saying in standard English) works at first, but eventually has the effect of making her seem much less thoughtful than she probably was. Iyer's graceful prose and Sachiko's stumbles as she tries to express herself in English are set side by side, even though he probably, to her ear, sounded even worse in Japanese. This flaw makes it hard to see their relationship as one of equals; there is a teacher-student quality to their conversations that becomes irksome. (I think it is this rendering of language inequality that makes some readers see Iyer as condescending, even though I don't think he means to be.) Do read this book for its many good parts, which almost make up for too much Sachiko.
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