Customer Reviews

Windows on Japan - A Walk Through Place and Perception

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In "Windows on Japan", Bruce Roscoe takes us on a journey starting from the "rear" of Japan in Niigata, over the Japanese Alps and then through the bustle of Tokyo to the port of Yokohama. During this soujourn, he takes us not only on a mystic walk through the heart of Japan, but also on a tour of the philosophical graffiti written on the walls of his heart.

To be honest, when I began reading the book I wasn't sure if I would like the format -- one chapter typically covers his trek through a little-known area of Japan, while the next would survey his thoughts on Japanese cultural issues. Nevertheless, I soon got used to his style and found myself enjoying the book immensely. As an aside, I live in Niigata City, so I had a particular interest in his views about many of the places in where he walked.

Roscoe does not write with the whiny, judgmental tone of many Westerners living in Japan. He writes instead with respect and integrity. Where he sees corruption, discrimination or injustice, he says so, but where he finds beauty, sincerity and flashes of the transcendent, there he writes truly memorable prose.

I was filled with both respect mixed with envy for Roscoe's experiences, because he walks quietly and effortlessly into the lives of earthy barmaids, subdued jazz aficionados, stale government workers, crabby cooks and passionate Buddhist Priests. His knowledge of Japan and the Japanese language is deep as it is admirable, and this allows him to be very much something of an insider dressed foreigners' clothes. Roscoe is one who can show us that the Japanese are no more inscrutable than those from other island cultures (such as New Zealand with its own dirty laundry of war crimes against Japanese) or cultures who treat the world with an island-like mythos (such as America, who corporately is committing acts of torture in defense of an imaginary war that is disturbingly evocative of the Japanese rhetoric from the 1930s).

A couple of places in Roscoe's book have left an indelible mark on my own thinking. One was his conversation with Japanese cultural authority Donald Richie, in which he noted that "Japan upsets puritan moralists...those who believe in a wrong way and a right way" (pg. 52). How true. I have seen this in the lives of many foreigners who struggle with Japan and who have not yet made Roscoe's mental journey. I must admit that I too have had my issues with this, but Roscoe's attitude of openness throughout the book suggests a non-judgmental way out of that mental prison. In addition, when he writes of nationalism, Roscoe states, "I don't believe that anyone is a Japanese or a German or an American. We should strip these accreted coatings as we strip peeling paint from wood, leaving only the grain and texture of our native timber to show through. The coatings seem always seized upon to impress that one people are inferior or superior to another, with no good and frequent fatal result" (pg. 214). Such thoughts are certainly threatening to the elites of various countries who would want their respective tribes to toe the line uncritically. That is why I found myself liking Roscoe's book even more the longer I chose to mentally travel with him through Japan.

As with any book, there were weaknesses. I think "Windows on Japan" should have concluded with Roscoe reaching Yokohama. However, he backtracks to Niigata. To me this somehow seems to go against the flow of his journey, though his reasons for returning are understandable. There are also a number of typographical errors in the book, which were probably unavoidable, but I can't help but thinking that the proofreaders at Algora should have redoubled their efforts before publishing this excellent book.

Despite these minor shortcomings, I would highly recommend "Windows on Japan". The book is not only a peek into some of the little-known areas of Land of the Rising Sun, it also has the potential to pry open a window into one's own heart as they reflect upon the deeper implications of Roscoe's thoughts and experiences.

When you take a walk in the cool Fall air, and you let your thoughts swirl around some theme that is on your mind while a song runs through your head . . . it feels refreshing, often leads to new and fresh insights into whatever is on your mind, and can end with a new outlook for yourself. In a way, that is the experience you get from reading Bruce Roscoe's unique book about Japan, Windows on Japan: A Walk through Place and Perception. This book allows you to explore thoughts and experiences about Japan from such likely suspects as Commodore Perry and Lafcadio Hearn, to some surprise appearance of Shirley MacLaine and Paul Theroux. It touches on some Japanese people's discomfort or embarrassment when dealing with foreigners, to how easy communications and relationships can begin here when a common ground is found, like the shared love of a dog. The book is both critical of, and inspired by Japan. Some surprises are also uncovered by the author on his walking journey, such as the International University of Japan where diverse students, living in an international community made up of over 50 nationalities, are found amongst the Koshihikari award winning rice fields. The book offers bits on the history of the Niigata to Yokohama region, some startling present-day findings, and suggests a visit to this often overlooked region of Japan is a must.

I live in Niigata, as a foreign female, and enjoyed reading about the areas around my home from a very different approach. I also found much of his references fun to ponder! I share many of the authors experiences including the some-times difficult task of making friends. Though I might like to challenge his feelings that many Japanese are a bit foreigner-phobic, or cold to foreigners. I wonder if a lone walking foreigner would be immediately and warmly accepted in the country side of any land . . . But do find out what happened to him when he found a dog to pat. Enjoy!

What most impresses me is Bruce Roscoe's very calm and measured writing. His observations are offered without favor or malice. In other words, I feel I can trust him as a writer.

Walking makes one contemplative, and that is the feeling the book has about it. Roscoe looks at each place he visits through its geography, history and people, as well as the music and the art he came across, and sometimes through writings about Japan by other writers old and new. It is not, as he explains, meant as a travel guidebook. He walks through ordinary scenes of everyday life and offers intelligent insight and observations on Japan. I don't think the book is meant to be a very personal and intimate account of his trip, in the sense of focusing on his own inward journey, but rather to open windows on Japan.

Along the way he discovers that, when in trouble, the most helpful Japanese are young students and older women. Along the way he faces rejection by a bar owner and by inn keepers. You will find out what he had to do to get to the other side of tunnels - there are so many in Japan - without being squashed by passing traffic. His chance meeting with a journalist at a jazz bar leads to an introduction to people who knew a woman, a former Geisha and the model of Komako, the heroine in Nobel-prize-winning author, Kawabata's book Snow Country. He also talks about his attempt to becoming naturalized Japanese.

The book has two chapters on Paul Theroux. Any reader of Theroux's books will be interested to learn about his tedious prejudices against Japanese. Anyone who is interested in reading about Japan will find these chapters very interesting for their stimulating subtext on things such as race, history, personalities, writing and so on.

I found the book to be intelligent and balanced reading. The author's clever, dry humor often put a big grin on my face. There are no huge revelations about Japan in the book. Yet, it reminded me how much more, even for a Japanese, there is to see in my country.

If you've ever finished reading the "Japan Times" newspaper in five minutes, finding it about as satisfying as an over-puffed Japanese donut; or if you've ever been driven to open Lonely Planet's "Japan" guidebook at some random page, in the faint hope of discovering some remnant of its first-edition frankness and enlightening humour; then maybe what you really need to do is read Bruce Roscoe's "Windows on Japan".

This book isn't just for inquisitive Western expats or footloose travellers who need travel insights and entertainment. It can also be quite inspirational for anyone seeking to build a bridge across the broad gulf that seems to separate Japanese and Western cultures.

Many of us have stepped onto a personal "Nihombashi" ("Japan Bridge"), be it for reasons of career, romance, or adventure. Bruce Roscoe has definitely crested the gentle red-lacquered curve of this bridge. However, he also raises the valid question as to whether learning the language; marriage to a Japanese woman; living in Japan for decades; reporting on the country for prestigious international journals; or even the birth of his children there, have entitled him to step off that bridge on the Japanese side. The answer will both surprise and intrigue the reader. It will also give each reader much to ponder about themselves.

Bruce Roscoe is a New Zealander by birth. Maybe surprisingly, a New Zealander has the right perspective to make the many keen observations which crop up on every page of this book. (In some ways, it helps not to be an American when philosophising about the relationship between Japan and the West, because so much of this relationship has been shaped by America's 150-year love/hate relationship with Japan. This book reprises the conflicting emotions of this stormy love affair - a relationship that, amongst many other things, coined that oddest of oxymorons - "Pacific War".)

Those of us who have seen both New Zealand and Japan always notice their geographical similarity. (Today, Samurai movies are filmed in New Zealand's Hokusai-like landscape.) However, one is also struck by their extreme contrast in population and industrialisation. In terms of cultural observation, the history-starved inhabitants of the "New World" can also be very adept at obtaining a panoramic view of the intricacies of an ancient culture such as that of Japan (with its long-accumulated strata of change and resistivity - folded and faulted like an alpine range...).

In writing "Windows on Japan", Bruce Roscoe actually walked through the historic passes of the breathtaking Japanese Alps, following the route of one of the five famous highways that unified the country from the time of the Shoguns 400 years ago. Ironically though, Roscoe only briefly describes the appearance of the mountains! This is really a book about people and cultural transition. The intricate drapery of personal observation hangs quite luxuriously on the framework of the travelogue.

The "walking" theme of the book mainly provides lots of time and space for the author to contemplate a beguiling swirl of issues. Discussions on such things as foreigners' depictions of Japan; language; music; and tourist tips from centuries past, are punctuated with brief reality-bites on arcane travel topics - such as how to thumb a lift through narrow trans-mountain tunnels without freaking-out the passing drivers! (Hint: use a polite sign, and remove your hat.)

This is a book about the challenges of finding acceptance in Japan, written by a man doing something that the Japanese simply don't do (at least in their own country!) - hiking along the roadside all by oneself. Very few readers will be inspired to walk Roscoe's route for themselves, but many will be attracted to his method of letting serendipity drive contemplation.

Other authors have hiked greater distances across Japanese mountains, and many Western authors have written travelogues about Japan (delightfully, Roscoe ruminates on some of the most interesting!). However, none of these other writers have demonstrated quite the same approach to discovering fascinating insights. For example, Roscoe is the type of observer who is curious enough to sit down with a major daily Japanese-language newspaper and tally up the number of English words that have been abducted into the Japanese language. Roscoe's effort - redolent of the fabled tirelessness of the Japanese "salaryman" - yields the startling statistic of 337 introduced terms in just that one newspaper. - Defining, with exquisite clarity, the ongoing flood of change into the still waters of this apparently undiluted culture...

There must be nearly a thousand other cross-cultural topics touched upon in this book. All are thought-provoking.

With its multiplicity of stimulating themes, and attractive prose describing the sometimes-unattractive follies of man, this is a book that the reader can go back to again and again. The mark of a "classic".

This book is for those of us who find traveling by foot, especially in Japan, gives us time to see and think in ways that we cannot do when rushing along by car, train, or even bicycle. A former expert on the Japanese shipping industry, Roscoe walks from the Japan Sea port of Niigata to the Pacific port of Yokohama, encountering racist noodle vendors, a tiny jazz bar visited by Jazz great Bill Evans, a zen priest who wants to make a pilgrimage to Charlotte Bronte's grave, and the neighbors of Kawabata's Snow Country geisha.
In between he ponders the way the world looks at Japan, from a nearly unknown visit by Gulliver himself, to New Zealanders affected by their own bloody encounter with Japanese POW's.
When one takes time to walk through a country, it is good to bring along a friend who is full of thoughts, facts and ideas, unburdened by central thematic ax being ground, and who will lead you to places unexpected.
Windows on Japan provides that friend and his ideas.

It's been a couple of months since I read 'Windows on Japan', and it's hard to know just which box to stick it in. I wish I could recommend to a lot of people, but I feel there are few who would fully appreciate it. I've had a strong interest in Japan for many years now (I currently live there), and the thing I appreciate most about it is that it rekindled my desire to know more this place, and to not take my surroundings for granted. I will be recommending it to others, strongly but selectively. Perhaps the most meaningful indication of its value to me is that it's one of the few books on my shelf that I definitely intend to revisit, to pick at the left-over meat on the bone.

One section that stood out for me was the chapter on Featherston (a small New Zealand town) and the Japanese POWs who were shot dead there in 1943. This book brings the whole affair out into the open, and for that chapter alone it was worth buying. Perhaps this could help to raise awareness of what went on there, and perhaps even generate further and fuller coverage of the Featherston...um, `incident'. Well, OK then...massacre.

This book joins a short list of titles by authors who find they can learn a lot about a country by walking across it. In this case the author intersperses his descriptions of what he sees, hears and senses with asides on what others, including Oscar Wilde, had to say about Japan. The result in most cases is insightful and charming. He eventually loses his way, however, diverting to look at, among other things, a revolt by Japanese POWs in his native New Zealand. The book also suffers from lack of editing in terms of style, grammar and typos. And the laminate on the cover eventually peels off. Still, readers will appreciate the effort to penetrate the miasma of Japanese culture and society far off the beaten track.