Customer Reviews

Memories of Silk and Straw: A Self-Portrait of Small-Town Japan

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This is a factual book in which a world that no longer exists becomes vividly real as seen through a provincial doctor's elderly patients recollections of their younger lives. My first introduction to this book came through my Japanese language teacher. Her physician is the son of the author. Each chapter covers the recollections of a single patient, so the book is very easily read in discreet portraits which together paint the overall picture. Dr Saga's patients tell their stories with such intimacy, warmth and frankness that you are drawn ever deeper into their world. All lived in and around Tsuchiura, a town on the edge of a large lake about 30 miles north of Tokyo. Many of the stories are of fishermen who made their living from the lake. There are also the merchants, gangsters and entertainers. Together, these people provide a real insight into the way people lived and worked in Japan before the rapid development of the latter half of the 20th century produced the comfortable lifestyles of today.

One of the best books about pre-war Japan. Each story brings to life a different aspect of life, culture, and class as they existed before the war. If you've visited Japan, you'll have a hard time believing this kind of world ever existed. I guarantee you won't be able to put it down.

1st person accounts collected by a Tsuchiura doctor from elderly Japanese. Together, they piece together a quiltwork of Japanese society from the bottom on up. All, in pre-war Japan. Tsuchiura is just next door to Tsukuba, a modern science city and destination for many foreign researchers in Japan. As one such researcher, the book helped me understand some seemingly unexplainable remnants of old practices that still persist. I couldn't put the book down. The stories of lives jump out of the pages.

A collection of interviews with people who tell stories of their lives in a small japanese village from about 1890 to 1930. Arranged by occupation, all are very interesting. One of the most intriguing aspects of the book is the commonality the stories share with my own American relatives (as to the hardships of farm life, what people did for fun, etc.). The book even occasionally slips into a "when I was a kid we had to walk two miles uphill in the snow" sort of mode, but this makes many of the stories all the more touching.

This book is filled with priceless historic snapshots of real-life everyday drama that cannot be found in any textbook. From farmers, fishermen, and merchants to executioners and geishas who entertained kamikaze pilots in the last days of their lives, these simple, unadorned memories of ordinary smalltown Japanese people living in a previous era under circumstances that we in modern, high-tech times cannot imagine left me in awe of the power of the human body and spirit. A learning experience in culture and history that reinforces how valuable the memories of our own elders are.

If one desires to learn more about various aspects of small-town Japan during the early twentieth century, this is a definite buy.
Every account given in the book is easy to read, interesting, and paints a vivid picture of how life was around a century ago. I found that I was wanting the book to be much longer as I learned so much from the stories and was thoroughly entertained. Subjects ranging from the work of a tofu-merchant to the rarity of shorts are covered so a wide range of information is available. Overall, I highly recommend this book.

The simple premise and unassuming approach this book takes to gathering its many narratives led me to have low initial expectations. I was completely surprised by how vivid a picture each villager painted with their simple narratives. I was completely transported by the stories and the author's effortless presentation, and I discovered a Japan that I had never even known about, and that none of its celebrated storytellers ever related to Westerners like me.

I finished the book while I was still in Japan. Ironically, being surrounded by modern Japan and modern Japanese actually made me feel more bereft at the end of the book. I was hopelessly nostalgic, and, as silly as this sounds, I wanted to go to Tsuchiura and hug every single one of the people in the book. It's not that they lived in a simpler time, nor do I have any Luddite filter preventing me from understanding the difficult, famished conditions in which they lived. But there is an ineffable quality of honesty, diligence, and character that all the interviewed villagers share, and I find myself longing for a time and a place that can so consistently mold such wonderful people.

These are the stories of everyday people in a small town in Japan. The narratives are short, Studs Turkel style, stories of early 20th century Japan from interviews made 70 or so years later. The small town, just outside of Tokyo is large enough to have a department store (that closes for a month to auction off silk cocoons) a draper and separate areas for brothels and geisha. There is a lake, teeming with fish and a nearby air force training center.

All interviewees agree that the area, now laced with superhighways and modern construction is not recognizable. No one is pining for "good old days".

What is striking is the poverty and its signs such as stories of paying (or not paying) the rice rent, households without pans, the work and logistics of bathing, the acceptance of infanticide and so much more.

Life is hard and most people work round the clock. The fishermen can always eat fish, but like almost everyone else has a life of continual work to make ends meet. Life as a geisha was not easy either. One former geisha's story of the kamikaze pilots was the most touching piece I've read on this topic.

There is technical knowledge here, such as how to make a roof, how to pack eggs to get them to market, how to dye fabric and how to style hair.

This book is beautifully laid out on a very nice grade of paper. While it would have changed the character of the book, the drawings are exquisite, and their level of detail begs for a larger format.

Perhaps life in larger cities is much better in pre-war Japan. Novels such as those by Tanizaki do not hint of this life. In Naomi: A Novel Joji's mother lives in the countryside, and it's a pleasant visit and he even inherits some wealth from her. The The Makioka Sisters enjoy catching fireflies in the country. In Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea" the town is portrayed as prosperous, the protagonist's mother has a shop dealing in luxury goods. The grinding poverty in this book tells a very differnt story.

I read this book in two sittings, but the better way is to savor it with two or three portraits a day.