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

by Alan Booth (Author) "The late spring rain in Tsugaru is a mixture of sleet and hail..." (more)
Key Phrases: head bottler, first ryokan, tubby woman, Saigo Takamori, Mount Iwaki, Sun Goddess (more...)

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the last before he died of stomach cancer while still in his 40s, Booth set off to retrace three journeys through Japan originally made by literary and military figures.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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 389 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha Globe (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 (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #337,827 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 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

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.

10 of 11 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

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you've lived in Japan, you'll love these travelogues, June 19, 1998

By	Hugh Lawson ([e-mail]) (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews

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

I recently picked up "Looking for the Lost" in a Kyoto bookshop at the beginning of a short journey of my own through central Japan - I was hooked within the first five pages by the powerful combination of Booth's smooth prose style - so smooth you can almost imagine the writer reading his work to you - and his refreshingly sharp insight into so many of the quirks of Japanese culture that leave most westerners bemused/confused, even those of us who have been here a while. Booth has a great way of telling you about some aspect of Japanese culture without making you feel like a complete beginner. Again, you can almost imagine being there with the author, sharing a joke about some of those country grannies or the women at public events dressed almost entirely in latex who somehow seem so polite and squeaky that you can't believe they're real! Add to this Booth's sense of the history of all the places he trudges through, and you really come to appreciate just how vivid he manages to make these narrative journeys.