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The Inland Sea by [Donald Richie, Yoichi Midorikawa]

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Donald Richie

The Inland Sea Kindle Edition

by Donald Richie (Author), Yoichi Midorikawa (Photographer) Format: Kindle Edition

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"An elegiac prose celebration . . . a classic in its genre."—Publishers Weekly

In this acclaimed travel memoir, Donald Richie paints a memorable portrait of the island-studded Inland Sea. His existential ruminations on food, culture, and love and his brilliant descriptions of life and landscape are a window into an Old Japan that has now nearly vanished. Included are the twenty black and white photographs by Yoichi Midorikawa that accompanied the original 1971 edition.

Donald Richie (1924-2013) was an internationally recognized expert on Japanese culture and film.

Yoichi Midorikawa (1915-2001) was one of Japan's foremost nature photographers.

Print length

322 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Stone Bridge Press
Publication date

September 28, 2015
File size

20447 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The author knows Japan better than any other Western writer. A hauntingly beautiful book." Oriental Economist -- Review --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

"The author knows Japan better than any other Western writer. A hauntingly beautiful book." Oriental Economist --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Donald Richie has been writing about Japan for over 50 years from his base in Tokyo and is the author of over 40 books and hundreds of essays and reviews. He is widely admired for his incisive film studies on Ozu and Kurosawa, and for his stylish and incisive observations on Japanese culture.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Shodo the islands begin. They stretch westward, hundreds of them, almost as far as the large southern island of Kyushu. The sea is like a lake. The wind ruffles the surface; the water looks shallow. The islands ride upon its lightly broken surface. The boats move back and forth, lines of choppy waves diverging, the wakes like furrows after a plow. It is late afternoon. The port islands catch the sun. Each detail--a rock, a tree, a stretch of sand--stands out, clear, sharp-edged. The starboard islands, the sun behind, are outlines. The nearest is almost black, those farther away a dark gray, the ones behind them purplish, until--islands piled like low thunderheads--the farthest pale into a watered blue, deepest toward the crest, almost white where their far shores meet the horizon. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Back Cover

Long considered a masterpiece of travel writing, Donald Richie's The Inland Sea is the journal-like record of a trip to the seafaring communities of central Japan. Aware of his foreignness, Richie delights in details and muses at length on food, romance, work, and human foibles. This new edition of The Inland Sea contains an introduction by Pico Iyer, a new afterword by the author, a map, and 18 images from the award-winning Inland Sea documentary. Richie wrote The Inland Sea some thirty years ago, but its themes of travel and the Outsider still endure, while its view of a Japan now nearly lost is both sad and indelible. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B015VN5M76
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Stone Bridge Press (September 28, 2015)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 28, 2015
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 20447 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 322 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #726,287 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #135 in Japanese Travel
- #351 in Japanese Biographies
- #473 in General Japan Travel Guides

Customer Reviews:
30 ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

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MAW

Better than a tour book

Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2018

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What a well written book, full of interesting tidbits and information on the Inland Sea, and the people who live around it, and work on it. The writer seems to write with joy about his discoveries, pulling you along for the ride. No tour book could do a better job telling you about this area.

5 people found this helpful

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Tache Noire

A classical tale about a journey through a lost landscape

Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2019

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Visitors to the art island of Naoshima will appreciate this leisurely ramble through the Inland Sea by boat. Written in 1962, published ten years later, it captures an aura of lost time, recaptured.

3 people found this helpful

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Reitree

Prepare for or Remember Japan

Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2016

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This is one of the best books highlighting changes in Japan over time, the history of current day customs and a great overview in preparation for or as a post-trip reminder of Japan. The writing is excellent and easy to read--it is a book that is hard to put down.

3 people found this helpful

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Classic Richie, Still Valid Today

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2014

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I had originally read and enjoyed some excerpts from Donald Richie's The Inland Sea (1971) in The Donald Richie Reader (2002). I have always thought that Richie has done some of the best writing about Japan from a foreigner's perspective and have been sympathetic to many of his opinions about Japan and the Japanese. After reading his journals last year after his death, I decided that there were several complete works that are worthwhile searching out and reading and this was at the top of the list. However, there are still several others to explore. It is at once a travel memoir, a love letter to a region and way of life that no longer exists, and a mediation on life in a strange country that he was not born in but elected to live in despite the fact it would never truly accept him. Richie also has musing about life in Tokyo versus the country, puritanism, the individual's place in the world, and the things he appreciates about living in Japan. He also makes some revelatory observations about his marriage and sexuality. Some of the experiences he has with locals have to be read between the lines and are not explicit admissions of couplings, but obviously are. There was an interesting scene where an old woman in Miyajima tells Richie a story about a boy who is excommunicated from the village for cutting the fishing nets-an act synonymous with barn burning at the turn of the century in America.

Here are some of the more interesting observations that I largely agree with and find true even today some 40 plus years later:

So the people are indeed backward, if this means a people living eternally in the present, a people for whom becoming means little and being everything.

Words make you visible in Japan. Until you speak, until you commit yourself to communication, you are not visible at all. You might travel from one end and, unless you open your mouth or get set upon by English-speaking students, be assured of the most complete privacy.

But to believe this is to disregard a great truth that all of Asia knows: appearances are the only reality.

Japan is the most modern of all countries perhaps because, having a full secure past, it can afford to live in the instantaneous present.

I answer as best as I can, aware-as one is always in Japan-that I have ceased being myself. Rather, I have become-once again-a Representative of My Country.

The white man who goes native in Samoa or Marrakesh, the Japanese who goes native in New York or Paris-this is possible, but it is, I think impossible for anyone but a Japanese to go Japanese.

Japanese loyalty. I cannot approve of it, and I certainly do not like it. Mindless devotion-whether of samurai or kamikaze-leaves me as unmoved as does the less spectacular variety from I come from. It is actually a kind of laziness.

The Japanese carry it one step further. Nothing is anyone's fault. This is because no one will take responsibility for anything.

Asia does not, I think, hoard and treasure life as we do. Life, to be sure, is nto considered cheap, but at the same time, one does not see the tenacious clinging to it that is one of the distinguishing marks of the West.

There is no tradition of anything but a politely hidden suspicion of the unknown wanderer. To be anonymous is in Japan, to be nothing. Only after your name, occupation, family, history are known do you become real.

Here, I thought, is a glimpse into the real Japan. This is the way the Japanese mind works. Appearances are reality without a doubt, and if the reality is not sufficient, then change the appearances.

An early symptom (of the influence of the West) was that everything somehow had to become respectable-not according to Japanese standards, where everything was already respectable, but according to the half-understood and even the dissolving standards of the West.

(As someone has remarked, the Japanese have fifty-three words for "prostitute" and yet do not distinguish between "lock" and "key"-which must be a commentary of some sort upon the importance they assign to things).

This nightly closing of all forms of public transportation is, I suggest, but one of the many forms that Japanese puritanism takes.

Europe , America-these lands are also inferior, but their ideas and products may be put to good use if they are first run through the Japanese mill and emerge unrecognizable and therefore very Japanese.

I really enjoyed tagging along with Richie on his journey to the Inland Sea and within himself. Luckily, there is more by him for me to explore.

6 people found this helpful

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Steven Domingue

a tale of two journeys

Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2011

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On the one hand "The Inland Sea" is about Donald Richie's visits to various locales on the sea between Honshu and Shikoku islands. On the other hand the book is also about the author's inner odyssey. The physical journey starts from Kobe and ends at Miyajima. The inner journey starts from a desire to escape and continues through loneliness and a kind of longing. I will not reveal where the latter journey goes.
"The Inland Sea" is beautiful, often melancholy, and sometimes humorous. It contains many insightful observations of Japanese culture. It is also a window to a searching soul.

3 people found this helpful

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Allan H. Clark

Delightful travel writing

Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2014

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This is a book a I read many years ago and had fond memories of. It is often as dangerous to reread books you've loved as it is to revisit former lovers, but in this case I was very glad I did. The romance of a Japan that is far from the crowded cities is marvelously conveyed in this book. It is slow paced and thoughtful throughout, wistful and delicate.

One person found this helpful

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howard cassidy

Journey into the sea of self

Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2016

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Richie captures cultural and personal insghts with a meditative style that makes for a unique take on time and place.

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Amazon Customer

A good read

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2018

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One of the classic Japan travel books, well written but easy to read, and sure to fascinate anyone who has travelled in the area.

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Top reviews from other countries

Amazonのお客様

Take it with you on your island hopping travels

Reviewed in Japan on September 5, 2016

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Best reading on the train and ferry during your visits to contemporary art hubs Naoshima, Teshima, and the Setouchi Art Triennale. Gives you a sense of how Japan has changed since the 1970s -- the "boonies" when the rest of Japan was experiencing economic boom, still having reference to ancient history and culture (now no more), the beauty of the landscape, also about being a blue-eyed foreigner in this country.