Tokyo Sketches: Short Stories [Paperback]

Pete Hamill (Author), S. Shaw (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1995

Pete Hamill, columnist and author of gritty stories about New York, turns his attention to Tokyo with stories about international love affairs, and unexpected relationships between Japan and the West.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Last year Michael Crichton's Rising Sun depicted Japan as the U.S.'s economic enemy and set off a xenophobic frenzy. Hamill's ( The Invisible City ) modest collection of 13 short stories has the opposite effect, making that distant culture seem eerily close to ours. His simple themes of love, loss, longing and deception are joined to powerful emotions, and reveal a psychological bond between the two countries. The central characters--both Japanese and American--are at the crossroads of the two cultures: a Tokyo reporter at her first English-language interview encounters a blind blues singer; a visiting WW II vet runs head on into an old heartbreak; a Japanese boy turns desolate without the friends he had before his father died, when they all lived in Louisiana; an aging baseball star, the designated gaijin on a Japanese team, learns an unexpected lesson from the native coach. Hamill has reached into seemingly disparate subcultures within each country--blues, samurai, baseball, yakuza--to craft moments of striking self-recognition. His spare, simple prose seems, in this context, to owe as much to such Japanese influences as flower arranging and haiku as it does to his muscular journalism and masculine fiction. But his fine accomplishment in this volume is to make the two influences appear to spring from the same source. While the stylistic simplicity can occasionally seem reductive (from time to time, he waves the emotional semaphores of sports stories), the pieces more often are gently, consciously restrained, and the overall effect is very strong.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

History has brought Japan and the United States together in a complex, often uneasy relationship. In these 13 subtle, well-told tales, Hamill finds the Japanese-American relationship rife with ironies both gentle and tragic. A few stories probe painful wartime memories, including "The Past Is Another Country," in which an aging U.S. industrialist detects long-held resentment beneath a Japanese offer to invest in his company. Others examine fresher wounds. "A Blues for Yukido" alternates humor and poignancy as it chronicles a young Japanese journalist's fumbling attempt to interview a legendary U.S. musician. "Running for Home" depicts a African American player's head-on confrontation with Japanese baseball. At their best, these stories may help bridge the cultural divide they so ably document. Recommended for most collections.
- Law rence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha International (JPN) (July 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 4770019505
• ISBN-13: 978-4770019509
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,396,204 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Pete Hamill is a novelist, journalist, editor, and screenwriter. He is the author of 15 previous books including the bestselling novels Snow in August and Forever and the bestselling memoir A Drinking Life. He writes a column for the New York Daily News and lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tokyo Sketches Is For Lovers Of Japanese Culture, June 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Tokyo Sketches: Short Stories (Hardcover)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The references to both American and Japanese culture were quite refreshing, and amusing to those who know background information on Asian culture. I, having grown up Asian-American, giggled at many of the references, understanding what was meant. The stories are short enough to make you want to read them and not be worried about not being able to finish, yet long enough to delve deep into the lives of the characters. Great details and description draw readers in. The endings make you wish for more and wonder if there was some mistake -- if a page was left out at the end. Some personal favorites of mine were The 48th Ronin, It's Only Rock 'n' Roll, and The Magic Word. Every story is truly a masterpiece. I couldn't put the book down even if I had to!

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, October 2, 2008

By 

Cosmoetica "cosmoeticadotcom" (New York, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tokyo Sketches: Short Stories (Paperback)

I'm delighted to say I was delighted by the collection- especially so since, before this book I had read the Collected Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald & was underwhelmed. The iconic writer's tales were larded with cardboard characters, creaky plot machinations, & just plain old bad writing, down to the construction of sentences. Hamill, on the other hand, has crafted a collection of 13 tales about the great Japanese metropolis. Rather, about things related to Tokyo. His characters are real, the situations unique, & just when you think the story is going to turn out a trite way it goes in another direction. Yet, his tales' ends are not deus ex machinas, nor Twilight Zone-like twists that properly belong to sci fi- they are, like life often is, abruptions in the flow- yet wholly believable....What makes the book & its tales so good is how they unfold. The little details- their descriptions, & usage within- separate Hamill from hack tale tellers. The way he so realistically describes Tokyo- sans mythology- reveals human bonds in ways that PC Elitist writing utterly fails to. Hamill does not ram these similarities down the readers' throats. Notably, most of the similarities are in the negative vein. The prose is poetic, but never floral. There are no wasted sentences, nor descriptions. Having only read his journalism & this book I wonder how much of this book's style owes to its subject matter. Hamill has a pitch-perfect sense of the length of his tales, where to make breaks in the narrative, & when to end the stories, always leaving the reader wondering what happened next in these characters' lives. Few writers have that- even supposed greats like Fitzgerald could learn that lesson.
Would-be fictionists in creative writing classes should be forced to read these tales for their economy, subversion of the expected, & the power of detail, rather than the pabulum that is spewn out now, which wins award after award, yet leave nary a fraction of the emotional impact of these tales. Having recently completed a 4 book series of memoirs on growing up in New York I feared that there may have been a large gap between the mid-20th Century's noted chroniclers of New York's streets & my tales. Luckily, Pete Hamill, if this book's an indication of his non-journalistic prowess, is more than an able bridge between the 2- he's a possible Master.

4.0 out of 5 stars excellent, May 30, 2001

By 

Neil K. Banman (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tokyo Sketches: Short Stories (Paperback)

I read this book a long time ago, and my memory's not so great, but this is just a concurring opinion to the above. Also, I've lent/given this book to other people and they tell me they've enjoyed it.