Looking for the Lost: Journeys Through a Vanishing Japan (Kodansha Globe) [Paperback]

Alan Booth (Author)

Book Description

Series: Kodansha Globe | Publication Date: May 15, 1996

A VIBRANT, MEDITATIVE MALK IN SEARCH OF THE SOUL OF JAPAN

Traveling by foot through mountains and villages, Alan Booth found a Japan far removed from the stereotypes familiar to Westerners. Whether retracing the footsteps of ancient warriors or detailing the encroachments of suburban sprawl, he unerringly finds the telling detail, the unexpected transformation, the everyday drama that brings this remote world to life on the page. Looking for the Lost is full of personalities, from friendly gangsters to mischievous children to the author himself, an expatriate who found in Japan both his true home and dogged exile. Wry, witty, sometimes angry, always eloquent, Booth is a uniquely perceptive guide.

Looking for the Lost is a technicolor journey into the heart of a nation. Perhaps even more significant, it is the self-portrait of one man, Alan Booth, exquisitely painted in the twilight of his own life.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Booth's The Roads to Sata (Weatherhill, 1986), which recounts his impressions and experiences during a 2000-mile walking tour of Japan, is considered a classic of its genre. In the present work, Booth, who died in 1992, offers a sequel. The book is divided into three parts, each involving a journey connected to a famous person or event in Japanese history. The first, entitled "Tsugaru," follows the path taken by the Japanese novelist, Osamu Dazai (1909-48), in a work by the same title; the second, "Saigo's Last March," follows the retreat of the tragic leader of the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion, Saigo Takamori, to his death in his home city of Kagoshima; and the third part, "Looking for the Lost," explores the setting of the 12th-century Japanese classic, The Tale of the Heike. All three episodes contain Booth's customary blend of rich historical and cultural background with fascinating and often humorous anecdotal experience. Recommended for all libraries with an interest in Japan and especially for those owning Booth's earlier work.?Scott Wright, Univ. of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Likening Booth to fellow quirky British traveler-writer Bruce Chatwin is inevitable, but Booth was kinder and gentler--less of a curmudgeon, more down to earth, more of a collector of people. For this book, the last before he died of stomach cancer while still in his 40s, Booth set off to retrace three journeys through Japan originally made by literary and military figures. The resultant miserable, rain-sodden walks he made yielded him seldom-seen, tiny villages populated by Japan's lost generation of rural, elderly, unsophisticated folk. He delighted in them but realized, bittersweetly, that such people will soon be lost forever as the new Japan of laser discs and karaoke creeps into even their precincts. Always, Booth transmits his fascination with life's small moments and the country's small details and thereby makes of his book a truly engaging, fascinating look at the Japan that doesn't make headlines. Booth's love for and frustration with his adopted country and his traveling both come out, too, and seem particularly poignant because we know that these journeys were his last. Mary Ellen Sullivan --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 389 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha USA (May 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568361483
• ISBN-13: 978-1568361482
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #479,349 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Sadness of Things, May 30, 2000

By 

James Hofman, II (Hiroshima, Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Looking for the Lost: Journeys Through a Vanishing Japan (Kodansha Globe) (Paperback)

I received this book from a friend shortly before returning to Japan to begin my life there again. Having read it in various stages of travel and arrival (I happened to be reading his funny, spot-on description of modern Nagoya when my plane touched down there) I was struck with how Booth can hollow out an empathetic place in the reader's soul for Japan and then fill it with keen, often wistful observations that invariably bypass the throwaway, surface image and instead imbue everything with 'mono no oware', or "the sadness of things." In a literary as well as literal sense, this author always takes the unexpected path, and the result is a deeply felt chronicle of wonder and longing.

I would especially recommend this book to those who have lived in Japan, as many of the observations and descriptions Booth records will most likely complete a half-formed thought or two that has been eluding your ability to state it precisely.

In short, this is a marvelous book, made all the more poignant by the idea that the wistful voices of the past and the echoing footfalls of the various journeys he recalls here are now all that remains of the author.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not just for folks who have lived there, August 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Looking for the Lost: Journeys Through a Vanishing Japan (Kodansha Globe) (Paperback)

I have never lived in Japan, but have visited, and found a certain "something" wonderful about that country and its people that I could never find adequate words to describe. Alan Booth communicates both the mystique and the down-to-earth attitude Westerner finds in Japan--I think it's that "something" that I've searched my own intellect, but failed, to describe. Reading Alan Booth's "Looking for the Lost" has helped me to connect with those subtle attractions that I found in Japan, and that kept me returning.

Since most reader-reviewers recommend this book to those who have lived in Japan, I'll add my voice and recommend it to those who have spent limited time there, or who are planning to travel in the outer-reaches of this gorgeous country.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sadness Over the Horizon, November 24, 2002

By 

Robert Self "Styrofoamdeity" (Higashi-Kurume, Tokyo Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Looking for the Lost: Journeys Through a Vanishing Japan (Hardcover)

Will some publisher PLEASE print a collection of Alan Booth's outstanding newspaper articles? These would be a wonderful complement to Looking for the Lost and Roads to Sata.

Looking for the Lost is an oddity. A book that I remember few details of, yet I remember with great vividness that I was moved by a intangible sadness that was always just over the next horizon of his journeys. Alan Booth was a writer of invincible good humor. Too much so to speak of his own impending death (though his newspaper writings about his trials with the Japanese medical system are classic). But the alert reader is constantly aware of an impending passing of life, seemingly inseparable from the passing of beauty in this country.

I was in Japan during the final years of Alan Booth's life here, pretty much in the same circles. It is my deep regret that I never took the trouble to make his acquaintance.