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The Inland Sea

Donald Richie,

Yoichi Midorikawa (Photographer)

3.85 · Rating details · 433 ratings · 68 reviews

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 ori ...more

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Paperback, 320 pages

Published October 20th 2015 by Stone Bridge Press (first published 1971)

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Jun 07, 2018 BlackOxford rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: biography-biographical, japanese

Creative Obituary for a Lost Culture

As an expatriate, I understand Richie’s feelings toward Japan. Paradoxically only a foreigner can appreciate what the native takes for granted. And those who are culturally changing aren’t in the position of a non-native to articulate or appreciate the changes they’re experiencing. Richie’s admiration for Japan is tempered by his recognition that the post-war ‘economic miracle’ of Japan already had had serious cultural consequences when he wrote in 1971. Almos Creative Obituary for a Lost Culture

As an expatriate, I understand Richie’s feelings toward Japan. Paradoxically only a foreigner can appreciate what the native takes for granted. And those who are culturally changing aren’t in the position of a non-native to articulate or appreciate the changes they’re experiencing. Richie’s admiration for Japan is tempered by his recognition that the post-war ‘economic miracle’ of Japan already had had serious cultural consequences when he wrote in 1971. Almost an half century later, after the financial collapse of the Japanese economy in the 1990’s, it has become clear that if anything he underestimated the social consequences of rapid growth, urban migration, and the loss of traditional family and civic relationships.

But The Inland Sea is only nominally about Japan and its changing culture. It’s more enduring commentary is really about the author himself. Richie is an interesting and attractive character, whose responses to the people and places he encounters in Japan are wonderfully detailed biographical revelations. He is droll, charming, sensitive, discerning, exceptionally articulate, impatient with aesthetic flaw, tolerant of the dirt and muck of human toil, wonderfully opinionated, urbane but with a dislike of modern urbanity, and acutely self-aware. It is no stretch at all to interpret The Inland Sea as referring at least as much to Richie’s own internal psychic inventory as it is to that finger of the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and its people. Both, I find, are equally fascinating.

Richie’s prose reminds me of that of Patrick Leigh Fermor, in whom I find the same engaging ambiguity of objective place and subjective person. When Richie says, for example “Words make you visible in Japan. Until you speak, until you commit yourself to communication, you are not visible at all,” he simultaneously refers to himself and the country. He makes no secret of the congruity he finds between himself and Japan as the reason for his affection for the country: “Japan, then—to answer this perennial question—allows me to like myself because it agrees with me and I with it.” Of course he is projecting himself into the culture and interpreting what he finds there creatively. But why not? What better way is there to be able to understand, or to communicate, oneself than to project oneself onto the big screen of such a refined civilisation in order to investigate the result? And, of course, to mourn and to repent of one’s own mistakes. ...more

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Sep 25, 2019 Kiekiat rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: travel, japanese-culture

A great travelogue by the wonderful and quirky Donald Richie, the writer who captured the culture of Japan and championed directors like Kurosawa and Ozu and brought them to the attention of Western audiences.

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Apr 03, 2016 Left Coast Justin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: my-top-ten, travel, lined_up_to_re-read

Note added Dec. 2020: For some reason, this is my favorite book to reach for when I'm feeling low. The combination of calm, foreignness and snapshot in time is something I can get lost in, every time.
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Does The Inland Sea, as conceived by Ritchie, still exist? Did it ever? I guess we'll never know, but thankfully we have this book to fire our imaginations.

This is really the author's paean to the non-urban Japanese of the 1970's. Ritchie, equally at home in NYC Note added Dec. 2020: For some reason, this is my favorite book to reach for when I'm feeling low. The combination of calm, foreignness and snapshot in time is something I can get lost in, every time.
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Does The Inland Sea, as conceived by Ritchie, still exist? Did it ever? I guess we'll never know, but thankfully we have this book to fire our imaginations.

This is really the author's paean to the non-urban Japanese of the 1970's. Ritchie, equally at home in NYC and Tokyo, found these country folks absolutely fascinating, and does a great job transmitting this interest to readers. Not all of his interests and opinions overlapped with mine, particularly in matters sexual. But nearly every page of this book contained something of value. Here he is on a ferry, being piloted by an elderly man [edited slightly for length]:

On the way, the old man, between yawns, gives me information. When he was a boy, back in the Meiji period, they used to have great sport out here with the octopus, which grows to great size in these shallow seas. They would catch a large one and bring it into the boat. Then they would put it onto the back of one of the boys, like a knapsack, the large, snakelike tentacles wrapped around his chest, the monster first struggling, then holding like a python. With it on his back, the boy would dive into the sea.

Though the octopus was free to escape, it never did. It was too used to holding onto things; once onto something, it would never let go. Since it was back in the sea, however, it swam in its own fashion, shooting water out behind while firmly attached to the boy's back, and he could half-guide it, much as one directs a stubborn donkey. In this way the youngster could enjoy an exhilarating ride, held up by the half-submerged octopus, propelled at a great rate, diving, gradually turning around and being propelled back to the boat, where the other boys were waiting to take their turns.

But, wasn't anyone afraid of the monster? Of course not.

And it is true. Japan, unlike the west, has no horror legend about the gentle octopus. Japan has no more need of horrid stories about the octopus than we do of frightful legends about the cow.

I can feel the hot sun on my back and feel the gentle rocking of the boat as I read things like this, and feel the drowsiness of a long journey in humid heat while wavelets slap against the side of the ferry.

I think I would have enjoyed meeting him, odd duck that he was. ...more

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Mar 01, 2011 Jimmy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: japan, travel-writing

Donald Richie has often complained of feeling distant from a traditional notion of Japan. Having lived in Tokyo since the 1950's, his introduction to the culture was the ever economically burgeoning urban hub of the island of Honshu. Although, for a man of his old-fashioned, conservative disposition, it's easy to see him not finding much to enjoy for terribly long amidst the cacophony and endless concrete sprawl of any major city in the world. Inspired by this cranky aversion to modernity, in th Donald Richie has often complained of feeling distant from a traditional notion of Japan. Having lived in Tokyo since the 1950's, his introduction to the culture was the ever economically burgeoning urban hub of the island of Honshu. Although, for a man of his old-fashioned, conservative disposition, it's easy to see him not finding much to enjoy for terribly long amidst the cacophony and endless concrete sprawl of any major city in the world. Inspired by this cranky aversion to modernity, in the late 60's Richie decided to set out on a voyage, bouncing back and forth throughout the historic towns along the coastlines of the Inland Sea. Parts of a record of his travels on this journey were taken from his journals, which he has laboriously kept from 1947 until the present day.

The Inland Sea is a small body of water lying between the three major island of Japan (Kyushu, Honshu, and Shikoku). It connects the Sea of Japan on the to the west of the cluster of islands, to the Pacific Ocean to the east. Richie traveled from the eastern edge of the Inland Sea, starting off the coast of Kobe on Honshu, ending at Miyajima, which is a little past Hiroshima, on the coastline of the same island.

This small volume by Richie reads like the bulk of his Japan Journals: 1947-2004, as it's basically a small portion of writing taken from the same journal entries. The tone of the writing may strike some as pedantic, which is more or less Richie's writing style. It's an acquired taste in this sense. Critics either find the man to be a stuffy old Orientalist (after Said's famous text on the subject, this cultural epithet is now widely used to describe Gaijin, though it's rarely supplied with much of a well-argued explanation of why so-and-so is one), or a pompous know-it-all. This may be a resultant habit from primarily writing for a Western audience, on the subject of a film history and culture that most are presumably unfamiliar with. In the case of this particular book, as well as that of the larger body of personal writings that it's a smaller sub-narrative of, Richie eschews too much crafty editing and lets the extemporaneous flow of his observations and thoughts unfold in its own straightforward, fragmentary style. If nothing else this benefits a book of largely scattered travel vignettes of a foreign observer soaking up experiences in a relatively alien culture.

These vignettes include Richie and various interactions with a diverse variety of locals. The dialogues he includes are largely intended to illustrate standard gaps of cultural understanding between himself and the locals of the various small coastal towns that he visits (at this time, Richie could speak the language relatively well, but cannot read or write in Japanese to this day). And whether one really appreciates his perspective on distinctions between Japan and America, they're nothing if not completely honest and sincere. Which is what makes the occasional snide remark about Richie as Gaijin, Richie as Orientalist, such an unfair criticism. While he may be frustrated by the somewhat understandable tone of xenophobia that the locals treat him with, he's never surprised by it. More importantly he never treats Japanese people that way. Over time his insights have become more restrained and sensible. Toward the end of his travels, there are a few paragraphs which display this reconciliation with his loneliness as an observer, and his empathetic admiration for what he sees as the stoic mindset, which are traits, in Richie's opinion, so inimical to the Japanese mindset.

"Yet if there is one thing that Japan teaches, it is to distrust the emotions. They are, after all, only ideas, like any other you can change your mood as you can change your mind. I see people doing this every day. Japanese have a particularly taking way of doing so. After an emotional excess of some sort, they will shake their heads as though just waking up and say, well, that's enough of that now, and turn their minds to other things. It is not a question of ability - anyone is able to do this - it is a question of volition. Today I have decided to be unhappy just as I might have decided to spend the day in bed.

It is, to be sure, very easy for the foreigner to give way in this fashion. If he thinks about it at all, he cannot but realize that he is regarded as unreal by the Japanese. He is too curious, too strange, to be taken seriously. His sorrows are not theirs, nor his pleasures - at least, so their attitude suggests. The friendliness is real but it rests upon simple curiosity. Most Japanese will go out of their way to help a foreigner in some kind of trouble, but this does not mean that he is any more authentic to them, nor that they find him emotionally understandable. And if a foreigner gets into a kind of trouble that the Japanese think is bad, then heaven help him, because they won't.

One lives with that knowledge, however, just as one lives with the knowledge of gray hair, wrinkles, and never becoming rich enough. It is not an important consideration and not one truly responsible for the funks in which foreigners find themselves in Japan occasionally, like that I have made for myself today."

Richie's travels, in and of themselves, are more or less uneventful. Yet, while devoid of excitement, his account of traveling throughout the Inland Sea is richly imbued with a style of voyeurism, much informed by hoping to connect with Japan's historic, pastoral heartland, while generally expecting to leave without a fully sated view of the significance of the past and its confusing relationship with present-day Japan. There's a sentiment of unremitting acceptance to these writings, and a specific aversion to solidifying an understanding of such an exotic world as a transient foreigner.

...more

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Sep 22, 2010 AC rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-21st-century, novels-japanese-asian, japan

This is a wonderful, brilliant, eccentric book - not a travel log -- but truly a dérive, a wandering through a portion of reality in search of self -- and the self and searcher, a man of such honest and tender and, indeed, unsentimental sentiments.

The richness of anecdote and observation -- social, psychological, erotic -- like beautiful landscape -- an oriental Claude or Poussin -- to which Richie himself compares the Inland Sea -- surprised me. I had expected something much slighter.

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Feb 21, 2013 Andrew Schirmer rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: japan, travel

Let me preface this by saying that I had well intended to write a long review, quoting long essential & brilliant passages, etc. However, the book is so good, that I have already lent it to a friend with an interest in Japan. I hope to get it back. Because it should be read again and again...

Ostensibly a travelogue of a journey through the Seto Inland Sea between Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, in The Inland Sea Richie spins his stopovers on tiny islands and encounters with locals (and, bizarrely, ...more

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Sep 14, 2013 Jim Coughenour rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: armchairtravel, japan

In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people. – Oscar Wilde

Written in the mid-60s, published in 1971, republished in this miniscule paperback in 2002 – Donald Richie's meandering journey through the islands of Japan's "inland sea" is a traveler's romance. Richie's account begins conventionally: "A journey is always also something of a flight." Only gradually does the nature of what Richie is fleeing from emerge, which could be called conventi In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people. – Oscar Wilde

Written in the mid-60s, published in 1971, republished in this miniscule paperback in 2002 – Donald Richie's meandering journey through the islands of Japan's "inland sea" is a traveler's romance. Richie's account begins conventionally: "A journey is always also something of a flight." Only gradually does the nature of what Richie is fleeing from emerge, which could be called conventionality itself, at least its mid-century, middle-America version. Hence the charm of the Japanese and their country.

Naturally this book tells us much more about Richie than it does Japan, but the transmutation of actual Japan into Richie's impressions of Japan – if that distinction even applies for a writer – is a marvel that slowly unfolds like [irresistible metaphor alert] an origami water lily. Richie steps off a boat into another charming island village; in the next paragraph he is offhandedly seducing a young gangster-turned-temple-acolyte or a wistful young woman who runs a bar – although not always with success. The book abounds with confident generalizations. One at random:

A sailor makes a good husband, just as a whore makes a good wife, and it is not in the least paradoxical that this should be so. It is precisely what, if one bothered to think about it, one would expect.

For him, the Japanese are uniquely "innocent," incapable of sordid behavior. He knows this is a romantic conceit and he believes it implicitly, and this conviction opens up a realm of perception and experience a more realist attitude would completely miss.

Early in the book he tells us he's in search of the distant vista of happiness. "It is never quite where you are but it is always just around the corner." I can't imagine a better description of a certain kind of dream. At the end of the book, Richie discovers happiness – a beautifully-rendered scene in which Richie meets a plainspoken old lady and her grandson. ("Old women in Japan can do anything they please.") There is a moment of magic, unforced and unexpected. I'll put The Inland Sea on the same haunted corner of the bookshelf as In Patagonia; One Hot Summer in St. Petersburg; Cleopatra's Wedding Present; and Death in Persia.

...more

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Jun 25, 2020 Daniel Warriner rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is probably the pinnacle of all Japan travel memoirs by non-Japanese writers. Donald Richie, well known for his books and essays on Japanese cinema and a former film critic for The Japan Times, first came to Japan in the late 1940s, then returned in the 1950s and stayed until his death in 2013 in Tokyo, at the age of 88.

I'd recently read his A View from the Chuo Line and Other Stories (2004) and The Image Factory (2003), both interesting but not anywhere near as substantial, romantic, or in This is probably the pinnacle of all Japan travel memoirs by non-Japanese writers. Donald Richie, well known for his books and essays on Japanese cinema and a former film critic for The Japan Times, first came to Japan in the late 1940s, then returned in the 1950s and stayed until his death in 2013 in Tokyo, at the age of 88.

I'd recently read his A View from the Chuo Line and Other Stories (2004) and The Image Factory (2003), both interesting but not anywhere near as substantial, romantic, or insightful as The Inland Sea, first published in 1971.

In this travelogue-slash-memoir, Richie seeks out the “real” Japanese people, as he calls them. Those he envisions were around long before, who he hopes to find still on the "backward" islands of Setonaikai. Island hopping he meets a medley of locals, whose way of life was then fast changing in the rapid current of Japan's modernization. His descriptions of these people, the landscapes and nature, architecture, lodgings, family and customs are rich and delivered gently and often beautifully. There is humor and sadness as well, a sort of mixture of amusing bumps or collisions between cultures and a lament for the passing of old ways and of time itself. He decides that “only in appearances lies the true reality” and contemplates the "mask" of the Japanese, worn by each and all, which he as well as Ian Buruma and others have written about to a great extent. Richie tells us, “I would never find them, the real Japanese, because they were always around me, and they were always real.” He tells us, too, in the note to the first edition, that "for the Westerner Japan is a great mirror. In it we can see the land and the people clearly—but we can also see ourselves." And this, he also tells us, is what the book is truly about, making it not only a fascinating account of the Setonaikai people but also a narrative of self-discovery.

In addition, the book includes twenty black-and-white, rather abstract, photos by Yoichi Midorikawa, which adds to the already abundant imagery in Richie's prose and the atmosphere and moods within. ...more

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Jun 25, 2017 Scott rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The book is dated (Richie's preoccupation with sexual freedom and hooking up, albeit solely on his terms, is one of the less endearing qualities of a certain kind of seventies male writer), and, like Paul Theroux, his persona on page is strong, slightly bitter, opinionated, and more than a little narcissistic. He's the kind of travel writer/alchemist who transform his emotions, moods of the moment into grand generalizations about the nature of the Japanese (by the end of the book, I was flinchin ...more

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Apr 03, 2013 Stuart rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, japan

As fellow reviewer Michael has pointed out, despite being a well-known name in Japan studies, Donald Ritchie’s books have very few ratings on GR. It’s a shame, because he really has a different take on the Japan experience. Although extremely knowledgeable about film, the arts, and Japanese culture, he surprisingly cannot read Japanese well. That isn't a problem for his travels since his main goal is to meet and talk with as many common people as possible. In a way, it could be an advantage to a ...more

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Jun 30, 2019 TBV (on semi-hiatus) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: autobio-bio-memoirs, nonfiction, japan

“The Inland Sea is a nearly landlocked, lakelike body of water bounded by three of Japan’s four major islands. It is entered through but four narrow straits, three opening to the south into the Pacific Ocean and one—called Kammon or Barrier Gate—to the west into the narrow sea that separates Japan from Korea and the rest of Asia."

"It has been called the Aegean of the East. There are, however, differences. The Greek islands are few, and they stand from the sea as though with an effort, as though “The Inland Sea is a nearly landlocked, lakelike body of water bounded by three of Japan’s four major islands. It is entered through but four narrow straits, three opening to the south into the Pacific Ocean and one—called Kammon or Barrier Gate—to the west into the narrow sea that separates Japan from Korea and the rest of Asia."

"It has been called the Aegean of the East. There are, however, differences. The Greek islands are few, and they stand from the sea as though with an effort, as though to indicate the water’s great depth. The islands of the shallow Inland Sea are different. They are small, and there are many—hundreds of them, so many that a full count has never been made, or certainly not one that everyone can agree upon. They rise gracefully from this protected, stormless sea, as if they had just emerged, their beaches, piers, harbors all intact. Some have springs, most have wells; many are covered with forest, almost all have trees or bushes. A castaway, given the choice between a Greek and a Japanese island, would swim toward the latter. It looks like a place where it would be nice to live."

"These islands are extraordinarily beautiful, and a part of their beauty is that it is passing.”

The above are extracts from japanophile Donald Ritchie's introduction to this book, in which he not only explores this region, but he sets out to discover what makes the Japanese tick, and in the process learns more about himself.

At the time of these travels Ritchie, an American aged around forty, had already been in Japan for a quarter of a century. Thus relatively fluent in the language, he is able to converse with all and sundry he meets on the various islands. He is a keen observer, and he describes in detail the landscapes, the people, their history and culture, as well as the many legends. Dragons, snakes and maidens feature prominently in these legends, and so do the many deities. He comments on customs and on the many paradoxes that he encounters. He shows a lively interest in everyone, from the very young to the very old from every walk of life, and is happy to chat to them all. “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 of the country to the other and, unless you open your mouth or get set upon by English-speaking students, be assured of the most complete privacy.” He tries to get into the collective mind of the Japanese, to the extent that it is possible to do so, as it is almost impossible for Westerners to fully understand the Japanese. They remain an enigma. He has some unusual experiences such as visiting a leper colony, and on another occasion he meets a yakuza (gangster) who is condemned to being an acolyte at a Shinto shrine on a remote island. In a teashop he battles his way through eating a very sweet shiruko made of red beans in a syrup. He valiantly struggles on to finish it, only to have the efficient and smiling waitress present him with another - this resurrected memories of seeing a film about Mr Bean (Rowan Atkinson) who spends about half an hour discreetly trying to dispose of a steak tartare in France, only to be presented with another after he has successfully hidden the final grain.

This book was first published in 1971 when Donald Ritchie was 47, and has since been revised several times. In 2001 at the age of 77 he decided to return to the islands to see what had changed (or not). In addition to the many splendid descriptions of the area, the author has supplied many beautiful black and white photographs. What I didn’t like was when he stopped being an observer and went into details of his own love life and his failed marriage. It neither interested me, nor did it add much value to the text.

The book is full of quotable gems. Here are a few extracts to whet some reading appetites:
(view spoiler)[

"The Japanese are resolutely of the here and the now, and this, to be sure, limits them. In the same way, one of the ways they have learned to survive in a sometimes quaking, occasionally flooded, and always overcrowded archipelago is to prepare themselves, daily, continually, for the worst. If it does not come, they have had a good day. I have always wondered why Seneca is not a best seller here."

"Japan lives intensely in the present. At the same time, and perhaps consequently, it needs a rich varied past, which is itself forever under reconstruction."

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

"One can imagine, with more pleasure, what a Henry Fielding or a Jane Austen would have made of the country. Both would have criticized. He would have exposed, in the midst of laughter, the most awful discrepancies and she would have observed with her loving but cutting irony many an abyss between intention and fact. He would have come to love Ihara Saikaku, whom he so resembles, and she would have passed her afternoons reading, for pure pleasure, Sei Shonagon."

"I have seen Blake subjected to the same kind of scrutiny at Tokyo University. They count the adverbs. The professor who first discovered that Proust, toward the end, says fork when he means knife is still living in the glory of his scholarly achievement."

"To look at a Japanese landscape is, often, to think of art. To look over the middle Inland Sea is, for me, to think of the rock garden at the Ryoan-ji in Kyoto—a rectangle of white sand from which rises a number of large stones—and to realize what this amazing piece of landscaping is about."

"Then we recognize where we have seen similar views. When Gozzoli or Paolo Uccello wanted an imaginary backdrop, when Giovanni Bellini or Piero di Cosimo needed an exotic landscape in the distance, when Puvis de Chavannes or Maxfield Parrish required an ideal land—then all of these painters created a painted paradise that closely resembled the humped and humanized country of the Inland Sea."

"Another difference is that Nikko exists in one of the most beautiful forests in the world, a forest of cryptomeria reaching to the sky. Among these, like toadstools among giant cedars, sit its cunning seventeenth-century buildings, looking like pastry houses in German fairy tales, like jewel boxes hidden in the moss."

"I wanted to come to Shamijima because here, well over a thousand years ago, was written the only poem about the Inland Sea to find its way into the four thousand poems of the Manyoshu , that ancient anthology made in Japan a century before Alfred the Great ruled in Britain. I wanted to see the place."

"The most important shrine, that at Ise, built by the emperor Suinin in honor of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu Omikami and still functioning, was completed, if the records are to be believed, fully twenty-two years before, on the opposite side of the globe, Pontius Pilate washed his hands of that other religious matter."

"It is like backstage at the Kabuki, like wandering in the world of the woodcut artists. Mitarai is like a town that fell asleep in the Genroku period and never woke up."

"There lie other islands, forested islands, uninhabited islands, farming islands, fishing islands, stretching farther and farther into the sea. The nearer are now black, almost invisible. Just an hour ago, as afternoon faded, they were dark, almost black, but those behind were slate gray, separated by silver inlets leading to a farther island, dove-colored. Then, those behind turned blue, as island after island, like a range of peaks, stretched to the horizon, a faintest violet that was almost not a color at all."

"The attitude is that once expressed by a very small boy, accompanied by his father, who caught first sight of me in my local Tokyo bathhouse: “Father, Father, come look. A foreigner!” “Yes, yes, I know. Come on, get dressed now.” “But, Father, look. He’s all white!” “You get dressed now, we’re going home.” “But, look, just look. He’s—ugh—all hairy.” “Look here now! You get dressed properly and be quiet.” “But look. Just look, Father”—pointing—“even though he’s a foreigner, he’s got one too.”"

In Hiroshima Mr Ritchie eats some huge butterfly prawns:
“They are so large that I pick them up with my fingers to eat them. This excites the interest of the waitresses, who talk among themselves and eventually call the manager. He stares at me for a time and then politely approaches my table. Is this then, he asks, the proper way to eat prawns? His manner is properly respectful, he intends no irony, he really wants to know. Perhaps the Japanese, using their chopsticks, have been eating prawns wrong over these hundreds of years. “Not really,” I say, “but it is one of the ways to eat them.” Are there then several ways of eating them? He wants to know. Perhaps the Japanese might avail themselves of these new ways. “Yes,” I answer, though I had not thought much about the problem. “There is this way, with the fingers, and the other way, with chopsticks, which is also correct.” He is not convinced, lingers. Maybe, he suggests, with a diffident smile, it is merely a provincial custom, something that occurs only in my esteemed home-country but is not to be seen in the world at large.”
(hide spoiler)] ...more

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Oct 16, 2020 Books on Asia rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: japan

Note: The edition I read was Whetherhill 1978. I cannot find this edition listed on GR and it will not let me add it.

Extremely disappointing. I can't believe I've recommended this book to people before. It has so much potential, but unfortunately is marred by the author's attempts to shag any Japanese woman who shows even a modicum of interest in him. Then, when he fails in his sexual exploits, he blames it on the woman for having led him on. And one of them was a 15-yr-old school girl. He blame Note: The edition I read was Whetherhill 1978. I cannot find this edition listed on GR and it will not let me add it.

Extremely disappointing. I can't believe I've recommended this book to people before. It has so much potential, but unfortunately is marred by the author's attempts to shag any Japanese woman who shows even a modicum of interest in him. Then, when he fails in his sexual exploits, he blames it on the woman for having led him on. And one of them was a 15-yr-old school girl. He blames his own western wife who "knew what she was getting into" when she married him. His justification for his philandering is disgusting. Why is it that men are willing to alienate half of their readers (the female half) with their egos? Do they really think women are interested in reading about their cringe-worthy sexual conquests? These are the kind of predators most of us women spend our entire lives trying to fend off (yes, from our teens onward. And it never stops). He's a great writer, but part of being an adept author is knowing what to include as well as what to leave out.

The writing is brilliant, but the author is loathsome and unreliable. In the Author's Note in the back, he writes concerning all the revisions he made to this original journal, "...I added more—things that had happened to me in other places in Japan (though they might well have happened in the Inland Sea)...

Um, what?! This is supposed to be a book about the Inland Sea. Yet instead, it is more about Japan, the author's pontifications on "the Japanese" and an underlying contempt for either the Japanese or himself (which is not clear).

The book is valuable only for his observances of Japan at that time (1962). Having lived in the Inland Sea for over two decades myself, I can say that life has not changed very much since the writing of this book. I'm talking about the islands though, not the cities on the mainland that face the Inland Sea. Much has surely changed there. Most who live on the islands do not consider those cities the Inland Sea. They are referred to as "riku" or the Mainland. Whether it be Tokyo, Osaka, Okayama or Hiroshima makes little difference. It's not the body of water that delineates as much as the concept of "convenience." ...more

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Aug 13, 2013 S. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: red-queen

Donald Richie (1924-2013) is one of those names in Japanology that of course you've known about forever. It wasn't until today, however, that I finally read one of his books. Seidensticker I've read through his translations since I was seventeen and then finally his non-fiction book last week. I'm not entirely sure why a keen Japan Studies reader took so long to get to these known classics. But Goodreads provides some clue-- Donald Keene's most read book--220 ratings. this work, called "a classi ...more

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Jan 07, 2019 Luke rated it it was ok · review of another edition

In terms of travel books written about Japan, this is a classic. It's a pretty simple work: Ohio-born outsider tools around the Seto Inland Sea and, in the manner of a flâneur, offers his take on the place. Pre-gallery Naoshima. Pre-bridge islands. A world of fishing boats and lazy afternoons.

Let's put it in perspective from the outset: the area that he's talking about is glorious. It's hazy and hypnotic, and completely suited to romantic introspection if you're a traveller who's impressed by v ...more

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Oct 08, 2014 Matthew rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: japan-ese

Living in Shikoku myself at the moment it was a great read. He paints a vivid picture of what the islands in the Inland Sea were like before the new bridges (to some) were built and before the area became more of a domestic tourist spot. Some passages spoke so much to me as I can relate to living in the area and the lines he drew between cultures were quite thought provoking.

The big downside to it was that there were a few passages that seemed to me blatantly misogynistic and possibly one that ...more

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Jun 14, 2020 Elena Sala rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: japan, asia, memoir, non-fiction, travel-writing

Donald Richie is probably best known as a pioneering expert on Japanese cinema. I've read and loved his books about Japanese cinema, including his wonderful books on Ozu's and Kurosawa's films.

THE INLAND SEA (1971) is a travel memoir, or rather, an account of what seems to be a single island-hopping trip from Kobe to Miyajima, a shrine island near Hiroshima, which was actually based on journals Richie kept on repeated visits.

Richie travels through the strait between the Japanese islands of Shik Donald Richie is probably best known as a pioneering expert on Japanese cinema. I've read and loved his books about Japanese cinema, including his wonderful books on Ozu's and Kurosawa's films.

THE INLAND SEA (1971) is a travel memoir, or rather, an account of what seems to be a single island-hopping trip from Kobe to Miyajima, a shrine island near Hiroshima, which was actually based on journals Richie kept on repeated visits.

Richie travels through the strait between the Japanese islands of Shikoku and Honshu (this is known as "the inland sea"), chatting with the locals and making grand and sometimes contradictory generalisations about “the Japanese”. He talks to dozens of people, and his sketches of their lives and stories are well observed and evocative. His writing is witty, his observations are astute. He loathes not just the cars and the advertisements that invaded Japan during its postwar economic boom, but the inexorable dismantling of what he had briefly come to know, and love, as the Japanese way of life. Signs of the encroachment of modernity and the West never escape his notice.

There are several things that I disliked about this book. First and foremost, I was disgusted by Ritchie's attempt to sleep with a fifteen-year old schoolgirl. After ranting for a long time about "Japanese innocence " and the beauty of Japanese skin, he gives a detailed and honest account of his attempt to seduce this underage girl. Fortunately, he was rebuffed. Some passages are so creepy and distasteful that made me wonder if I should keep on reading, for example: "Certainly a part of my quest is devoted to seducing the natives ....[]. But in the case of fifteen-year-old girls you would be wise not to. If you are like me, you want to seduce rather than corrupt, and you attempt to maintain the fuzzy line separating the two. I want to take without hurting, I tell myself."

He is unwittingly honest when he says he wants to "seduce the natives": part of this memoir seems like a sex tour. Ritchie says he feels lonely but, in my opinion, he seemed relentlessly horny rather than lonely. He is obsessed with "the small and furry opening that attracts all eyes”. So he talks about sex with strangers, visits seedy bars and brothels. At times he is boorish, and, fortunately for this reader, he is frequently rebuffed.

Some reviewers consider this book a jewel, a classic book of travel writing, the best introduction to Japan. I couldn't disagree more. Not only does it have these unpleasant and off-putting parts described above, but the narrator sees Japanese people in a dehumanizing, inaccurate, orientalist way.

A very disappointing and disturbing book by a writer I admired for all that I learned from him about Japanese cinema. ...more

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Oct 19, 2007 Davin rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: japanisme

I go back and forth on this one. It is supposed to be a classic of western takes on japan and there are parts I liked a lot, but it took 5-6 months to finish it and I read a dozen or so other books in the meantime, which speaks to how much I enjoyed it.

A memoir/travelog of a gaijin resident of Japan who travels to its more remote areas looking for the traditional Japan. He goes to some interesting places and makes lots of compelling observations but he's not someone I'd want as a traveling comp ...more

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Dec 01, 2018 Sara Benson rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: travel, memoirs-psychology, 2018

Often called a classic of both travel literature and of books about Japan written by foreigners, this book also argues in favor of statutory rape being a matter of seduction and “consent.” In one passage, the author narrates a rape fantasy after failing to “seduce” a 15-year-old schoolgirl. The repulsive personal memoir aspects of this travel tale detract from the real interest of the book: taking a time-capsule look at rural island life in Japan during the 1970s.

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Mar 01, 2013 Jason Keenan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: japan

I can't believe it took me this long to discover Richie. I picked this up because it was about Japan and was pleased to discover one of the best travel books I've ever read.

Written in the late 60s and early 70s it captures what was then a vanishing way if life - one that is surely gone. The author is also shockingly honest about his inner monologue. Well worth a read. ...more

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Dec 27, 2007 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: japan

Richie's warts-and-all approach feels a bit more genuine than some other Japan books I have read. I can see how other reviewers might find him a bit pompous and/or Orientalist, though. ...more

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Mar 25, 2014 Patrick McCoy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, travel, japan, biography-autobiography

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 li ...more

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Mar 24, 2012 D.M. Dutcher rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: japanese, nonfiction

A man travels across the Inland Sea of Japan, a place at the time time full of remote islands closer to ancient Japan than the modern world. He observes, flirts, listens, collects stories, thinks, philosophizes, and more. It's done with such beauty and eye for detail that it reads like the best fiction, and the stories tell so much about what the Japanese mind is, and the Japanese people are. Some of them feel more alien than the best fantasy tales: how one island made its living from "prostitut ...more

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Mar 30, 2008 Powersamurai rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: japan-related

Part fiction based on Richie's travels through the Inland Sea during the 60s, this is a brilliant snapshot of rural Japan. It is a great introduction to the Japan of old for the armchair traveller. As with many travelogues, there are some things that cannot be appreciated fully unless you have lived in Japan for a few years, but that should not discourage anyone from reading it. There are so many things in the book, that everyone will have a favourite quote, episode or island. If Richie's apartm ...more

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Apr 11, 2013 Vivian Blaxell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Beautifully written and constructed, if a bit arch and Edwardian in tone at times. And the journey through the Seto Naikai is at once funny, sexy, melancholic and wise. But the entire text is now an historical artifact. The Seto Naikai Richie writes about is no more; the Japan he writes about is pretty much gone, and the way he writes about it would draw howls of criticism these days, for we may no longer begging sentences with "The Japanese are ..." ...more

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Nov 29, 2010 John rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: travel, ebooks, library_books

Interesting story of the author's travels through a remote part of Japan nearly 50 years ago. The continuous narrative format - there are no chapters, just "breaks" ( ***** ) becomes a bit tough to follow near the end, along with all the Japanese place names, that ran together for me. Four stars for the writing quality, and variety of experience; I was rarely tempted to skip ahead. ...more

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Jan 29, 2014 haetmonger rated it really liked it · review of another edition

"I don't care if I never leave."

I liked this one. I certainly wouldn't subscribe to everything Richie says, but it was definitely refreshing to read someone saying different from how my friends here all talk about Japan. I should try to read more in the Literate Westerner Living in Japan genre. ...more

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Oct 29, 2007 Dara rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Orientalist drivel. And not even good, enjoyable, well written drivel. Truly makes me long for a "0 stars" option. ...more

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Nov 07, 2007 Tosh rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Without a doubt Donald Richie is the best foreigner ever to write about Japan. For anyone interested in Japanese culture (pop and old) do read him before going to Japan. He's essential. ...more

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Jul 13, 2008 Nick rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is my favorite book on Japan. Donald Ritchie has a great eye for detail. I recommend it for anyone that wants to know more about small town (or island) Japan.

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Jun 03, 2013 Kai rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

at times racist/dated. not sure if he likes or dislikes the culture/place he *chooses* to live in. but okay.

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About Donald Richie

Donald Richie

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Donald Richie is an American-born author who has written about the Japanese people and Japanese cinema. Although he considers himself only a writer, Richie has directed many experimental films, the first when he was 17. Although Richie speaks Japanese fluently, he can neither read nor write it.

During World War II, he served aboard Liberty ships as a purser and medical officer. By then he had alrea Donald Richie is an American-born author who has written about the Japanese people and Japanese cinema. Although he considers himself only a writer, Richie has directed many experimental films, the first when he was 17. Although Richie speaks Japanese fluently, he can neither read nor write it.

During World War II, he served aboard Liberty ships as a purser and medical officer. By then he had already published his first work, "Tumblebugs" (1942), a short story.

In 1947, Richie first visited Japan with the American occupation force, a job he saw as an opportunity to escape from Lima, Ohio. He first worked as a typist, and then as a civilian staff writer for the Pacific Stars and Stripes. While in Tokyo, he became fascinated with Japanese culture, particularly Japanese cinema. He was soon writing movie reviews in the Stars and Stripes. In 1948 he met Kashiko Kawakita who introduced him to Yasujiro Ozu. During their long friendship, Richie and Kawakita collaborated closely in promoting Japanese film in the West.

After returning to the United States, he enrolled at Columbia University's School of General Studies in 1949, and received his Bachelor's Degree in English in 1953. Richie then returned to Japan as film critic for the The Japan Times and spent much of the second half of the twentieth century living there. In 1959, he published his first book, The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, coauthored with Joseph Anderson. In this work, the authors gave the first English language account of Japanese film. Richie served as Curator of Film at the New York Museum of Modern Art from 1969 to 1972. In 1988, he was invited to become the first guest director at the Telluride Film Festival.

Among his most noted works on Japan are The Inland Sea, a travel classic, and Public People, Private People, a look at some of Japan's most significant and most mundane people. He has compiled two collections of essays on Japan: A Lateral View and Partial Views. A collection of his writings has been published to commemorate fifty years of writing about Japan: The Donald Richie Reader. The Japan Journals: 1947-2004 consists of extended excerpts from his diaries.

In 1991, filmmakers Lucille Carra and Brian Cotnoir produced a film version of The Inland Sea, which Richie narrated. Produced by Travelfilm Company, the film won numerous awards, including Best Documentary at the Hawaii International Film Festival (1991) and the Earthwatch Film Award. It screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992.

Author Tom Wolfe describes Richie as: "the Lafcadio Hearn of our time, a subtle, stylish, and deceptively lucid medium between two cultures that confuse one another: the Japanese and the American."

Richie's most widely recognized accomplishment has been his analysis of Japanese cinema. From his first published book, Richie has revised not only the library of films he discusses, but the way he analyzes them. With each subsequent book, he has focused less on film theory and more on the conditions in which the films were made. One thing that has emerged in his works is an emphasis on the "presentational" nature of Japan's cinema, in contrast to the "representational" films of the West. His book, A Hundred Years Of Japanese Film includes a helpful guide to the availability of the films on home video and DVD mentioned in the main text. In the foreword to this book, Paul Schrader says: "Whatever we in the West know about Japanese film, and how we know it, we most likely owe to Donald Richie." Richie also has written analyses of two of Japan's best known filmmakers: Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa.

Richie has written the English subtitles for Akira Kurosawa's films Kagemusha (1980) and Dreams (1990)[8].

In the 21st century, Richie has become noted for his erudite audio commentaries for The Criterion Collection on DVDs of various classic Japanese films, notably those of Ozu (A Story of Floating Weeds, Early Summer), Mikio Naruse (When a Woman Ascend ...more

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A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History

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Quotes from The Inland Sea

“Momoko’s idea of the life of Mrs. Browning was singular. She had somehow gotten the idea that the poetess had been forced into a position much beneath her, had, in fact, been obliged to give herself to numbers of men, none of whom deserved her, and had consoled herself by penning those immortal lyrics of hers. I mentioned that the only men I know of in Elizabeth’s life were her father and her husband, both of whose intentions, so far as I had heard, had been impeccable. Yes, she nodded, pensive. She had heard of them. Robert—he was her first, her true love. And she remained true to him. While in the very throes of unfortunate transport in anonymous arms she had thought only of Robert. But certainly, I ventured, he had outlived her. He had gone on and become one of England’s greatest poets. “Did he write poetry too?” she asked, struck at the thought. “Yes, a very great deal.” She pondered, finger on cheek, then decided how sweet it was—he, the dear man, had loved her so much he had copied her. And she, forced into this promiscuous life, remained true to him, no matter what. And who forced her into it? Her father of course, crude man, who thought of nothing but money. I tried to discover where she could have uncovered such a fund of misinformation. Japanese schools teach some wild things but nothing, I think, so far from any reality as this. Upon this point, however, Momoko was not to be drawn out. She knew what she knew.” — 0 likes

“Japan continues to give this unexampled view of history. It also offers the excitement of watching change. Old and new in these small provincial cities continue to exist side by side, and the new is often built directly beside, rather than directly on top of. One may, for a time, compare; for a space, see history in the gap. Very attractive to a heritage-starved, history-parched American.” — 0 likes

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