Shalom Japan: A Sabra's Five Years in the Land of the Rising Sun [Mass Market Paperback]

Shifra Horn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1997

When Shifra Horn traveled across the world from her native Israel to join her diplomat husband in Japan for a five-year stay, East met West in remarkable and often humorous ways. Writing with warmth, charm, and unflagging humor, Shalom, Japan offers a window into Japanese daily life and culture and captures the many moods and unique spirit of Japan. of photos.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Shifra Horn, the wife an Israeli diplomat, provides a colorful, if somewhat generalized, account of her five years in Japan. A teacher of Hebrew, Ms. Horn's scrupulous relationships with her students stand in contrast to many of her shocking observations, including the country's seemingly endless fascination with pornography, the affordability and availability of sex-change operations, dinners that cost $1,000, computerized toilets, and sex clubs that allow audience to join in with the performers. Though her descriptions will surprise those unfamiliar with Japanese culture, Ms. Horn often neglects comment on the rich traditions and subtleties of her adopted home in exchange for indiscriminate stereotypes and tabloid-style hype. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

It's hardly common knowledge that the Japanese have the most advanced bathroom plumbing on earth: electrically heated toilet seats with an array of buttons to control temperature, produce sprays of cleansing water, stereophonic music and automatically close and open the seat. Already available are sensors to analyze your urine and alert you to illness. In Japan, household movers will not only fumigate and neatly package everything you own (including your garbage) but will also transport you in a comfortably furnished cubicle. The aversion to bodily uncleanliness creates a thriving surgical specialty in the total removal of sweat glands. Horn, who spent five years in Tokyo as the wife of an Israeli diplomat, also tells us that the most lurid pornography, including graphic depictions of rape, defecation, sodomy, etc., is not only enjoyed by children and adults alike, but that the only prohibition against it is the showing of pubic hair; that birth control pills, considered too dangerous, are unavailable and IUDs are not favored, but safe abortions are as easy to get as a dentist's appointment; that the Japanese are encouraged to believe they have longer intestinal yardage and unique brain structures that make them superior to everyone else in the world. All of these not-so-homely tidbits?and more?are embedded in Horn's wicked and freshly revealing report on domestic details of Japanese life, which also provides insights into a society where the preponderance of men gives women an upper hand in marital choices, where the Mafia and the police work together on many matters, and where, parallel to the existence of considerable anti-Semitism, there are those who believe that the Japanese themselves are one of the lost tribes of Israel.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Kensington (September 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157566223X
• ISBN-13: 978-1575662237
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #400,970 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Eminently readable, but not what I expected, February 15, 2001

By 

Jennifer M. Macleod "yiddishe supermama" (Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Shalom Japan: A Sabra's Five Years in the Land of the Rising Sun (Mass Market Paperback)

Shifra Horn, a well-known Israeli writer, gives us her mostly-friendly take on Japanese culture. There was a lot of potential here, but this book could have been more than it turned out to be.

I read this book hoping to find something more than the usual "visiting Japan" travelogue. I was hoping to find out what it was like for Horn, as an Israeli and a Jew, to live in Japan, but that's exactly what she denies readers for most of the book.

The way it's been organized, the book is divided into two distinct sections, and the first section, unfortunately, gives mostly the kind of rambling overview of Japanese culture that you might expect from any travel writer.

From the well-known (the Japanese obsession with business cards) to the cute (the Japanese obsession with toilets) to the obscure and sometimes jarring (the Japanese obsession with abortion), Horn writes capably, but deals out few surprises and little by way of her own perspective on the issues.

Perhaps these essays filled a niche for Hebrew speakers, with little access to the wealth of material already available in English for Japan-philes, but as an English speaker, I felt like I'd read most of what she was saying before.

Just when I was getting fed up, though, I found the second "half" of the book (significantly shorter). Here, Horn really gets going; it's like we're meeting her for the first time. She writes about what it's like to be an Israeli diplomat and Hebrew teacher in a country where, though Israelis and Judaism are often revered, the Nazi alliance hasn't faded from memory and antisemitism is making an unsettling comeback.

Perhaps the book would have been more of an even read if she'd spaced out these more personal essays, rather than clumping them together into a ghetto of their own. As it is, the first section isn't astonishing, and the second half, unfortunately, just seems like too little, too late.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A nice enough read, September 13, 2004

By 

Translator (Israel) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shalom Japan: A Sabra's Five Years in the Land of the Rising Sun (Hardcover)

Hello! I am the translator of this book and the reviewer is right, I am not familiar with the Japanese language; it woudl be nice if I were, but not really essential, since I translate from Hebrew to English. I transliterated the Japanese words from Hebrew and the author - who claims a deep and expert knowledge of all things Japanese - corrected them into what she assured me was the correct, phonetic English spelling.
My sincere apologies for any offence caused.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Glimpses of Japan, March 30, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Shalom Japan: A Sabra's Five Years in the Land of the Rising Sun (Hardcover)

I just finished reading this book, Shalom, Japan, and I must say that I was fascinated. Although I agree with the previous reviewer that there is not much in the way of in-depth analysis of the Japanese culture as a whole, I don't believe that the author intended to attempt such a feat. Horn basically has filled the book with little vignettes of her experiences and encounters while in Japan, and she is a very good storyteller. She covers everything,for example:super toilets that can tell you if you're pregnant, red-light districts, garbage collection systems, her experiences teaching the Hebrew language to the Japanese,the onsen (communal Japanese baths), and trying to accomodate Japanese food to her vegeterian way of life. There are also some stories about Jews living in Japan during WWII. There are a few passages which may come across to some as generalized statements about the Japanese people as a whole, but in retrospect, her observations are lighthearted and reflect the thoughts that entered her mind at the time. At no time does she ever condemn the Japanese. In fact, she makes it quite clear that she highly respects the Japanese people and tries diligently to understand their way of life. As an Asian American who has visited Tokyo several times, I enjoyed this book tremendously. It brought back many memories and also allowed me to experience Japan through the eyes of an Israeli. Please give this book a chance. Even though it will not win any prizes for deep comparative anthropologic analysis, it was genuine, fun, and thought provoking. I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in Japan or the Jewish experience in Asia.