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A Tokyo Romance: A Memoir
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A classic memoir of self-invention in a strange land: Ian Buruma's unflinching account of his amazing journey into the heart of Tokyo's underground culture as a young man in the 1970's
When Ian Buruma arrived in Tokyo in 1975, Japan was little more than an idea in his mind, a fantasy of a distant land. A sensitive misfit in the world of his upper middleclass youth, what he ...more
When Ian Buruma arrived in Tokyo in 1975, Japan was little more than an idea in his mind, a fantasy of a distant land. A sensitive misfit in the world of his upper middleclass youth, what he ...more
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Showing 1-30
Over the years, and especially going back and forth from Japan, I have read many books by fellow Americans and some British citizens on their time spent in Japan. A lot of them are crap. The ones that stand out are the ones that wrote about Japanese cinema and literature. The girls or guys who went there to get a job as an English teacher are usually not that interesting, but alas, those who are devoted to a specific Japanese artist or thinker, then yes I very much enjoy that type of book. There
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Nov 27, 2018
Lyn Elliott
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
japan,
autobiography-memoir
As a young man, Ian Buruma lived in Japan for several years , exploring the fringe worlds of theatre, film and performance art, where erotu, grotu and nonsensu prevailed (erotic/porn, grotesque and nonsensu) prevailed.
He hung out with actors, joining them on tour, eating, drinking, visiting sex clubs – all part of the life of the Tokyounder-life that he wanted to explore. There was more than enough detail for me of his and the group exploits, though those interested in the inner workings and ten ...more
He hung out with actors, joining them on tour, eating, drinking, visiting sex clubs – all part of the life of the Tokyounder-life that he wanted to explore. There was more than enough detail for me of his and the group exploits, though those interested in the inner workings and ten ...more
This memoir is both a poignant account of Buruma's romance with Japan, a romance that both succeeds and fails, and also a compelling "insider" account of 1970s Japanese avant-garde culture, particularly the theater of Juro Kara. Buruma confronts an old problem with insight and sympathy--the inability of the gaijin, however much energy he might pour into the effort, to ever be accepted in Japan as anything other than an exotic outsider (so-called "gaijinitis"). Ironically, he argues, the more ade
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I was prepared to love this book and looked forward to a trip down memory lane since I was also in Japan during the time period Buruma is writing about. But it's more of a brag about his own youthful sexual exploits and unless you have a really strong interest in Japanese cinema, a lot of this is old hat and just another gaijin in Japan story.
There were moments when he did express some deeper and more interesting thoughts so the book is not a total loss. But mostly I just thought, "this again." ...more
There were moments when he did express some deeper and more interesting thoughts so the book is not a total loss. But mostly I just thought, "this again." ...more
An unfinished book that regularly reappears on my bedside table is The Donald Richie Reader: 50 Years of Writing on Japan, or its alternate, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004. Richie arrived in Japan in 1947 and ended up enjoying the rest of his life there – the journals, writings on Japanese cinema and culture (not to mention, The Inland Sea), never lose their charm for me. Richie appears in the first sentence of Buruma’s new book, and I was guilty of expecting a modulation of the same, the insider
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I’ve travelled several times to modern Japan, I adore the country, so I appreciated the perspective of the country in the time that Buruma writes about, the 1970’s. It is a fascinating account of some of the avant-garde creatives of the era, and is set to a good pace. However, the let down of this is, unfortunately, that the writer himself anchors the interesting parts of Japan around his inability to do anything interesting at all. I suppose it is one way of reflecting on the way a gaijin’s exp
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Read this while travelling through Japan and really enjoyed it. It offers a simultaneously broad and detailed examination of Japanese culture from a foreigner’s perspective, using experimental Japanese theatre as it’s starting point. Do not be put off by its supposed focus on Japanese theatre and film; I had no prior knowledge of these subjects and found the book engaging throughout as they are often used as a springboard into a more holistic discussion of Japan. The proliferation of Japanese lo
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A great source of reading ideas for me these days is the weekly NYTimes Book Review "By The Book" column where I was first introduced to Ian Buruma who I hadn't heard of before. The idea of this book resonated with me as my wife and I spent two years in Japan. Buruma was attracted to Japan by the Japanese cinema and spent much of his time there among some of the most radical, innovative theatrical producers and movie directors in the country at the time (the mid-1970s). Can't say that I could re
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Uninspired. And at least 60% of the material here can be found in other (better) books by Buruma.
Exceptional meditation/memoir of the author's years in Japan in the mid-70's, mostly as a student. Do not look to this to help you understand Japan or the Japanese. Such understanding would come obliquely, as the author examines his "otherness" vis-a-vis both the Japanese and Westerners as well.
Buruma has a Dutch father and an English mother. His mother brought him up with a lot of English traditions which led to his feeling apart in Holland. There are also feelings of sexual ambiguity even befo ...more
Buruma has a Dutch father and an English mother. His mother brought him up with a lot of English traditions which led to his feeling apart in Holland. There are also feelings of sexual ambiguity even befo ...more
West meets East and past meets future in this somewhat self-indulgent retrospective into the “gaijin” author’s foray into the creative, if sometimes seedy, underground culture of 1970s Tokyo. It reads like an ethnography in parts, which I guess it is. I was given an advance copy courtesy of LitHub First Readers’ Club Book Giveaway (thank you).
Buruma spent several years in Japan experiencing all he could about the post-war, avant-garde theater scene in Tokyo. It’s incredibly interesting to get such a privileged view of the somewhat crazy and hyper-cultural counter culture of Japan in the 70s, even more so when it comes from an outsider/foreigner who managed to luck into some very rare opportunities. Every troupe and individual worth mentioning in the time period is someone Buruma either interacted with in private or met in highly pers
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May 28, 2018
Patrick McCoy
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
biography-autobiography,
japan
Ian Buruma is one of my favorite public intellectuals due to the variety of subjects he explores in his writing, Asia and Europe, religion and history among other others. However, he cut his teeth in Japan and that is where I first came across his writing in the fascinating Behind the Mask, which had some interesting insights into Japanese culture-particularly literature and film. So I had somewhat high expectations for this memoir, A Tokyo Romance (2018), that were not met. That being said ther
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Fascinating tale, memoir. It starts off with a privileged baby boomer from Holland, albeit his mother is a Jewish woman from a England whose brother was John Schlesinger, director of the iconic 1969 film Midnight Cowboy. The description of the upheaval of the 60s was interesting mainly because it showed how similar the scene was in Europe and US. The author is drawn to Japan, having a Japanese girlfriend, where he remains for six years.
He is involved in the underground art world in Japan, dance, ...more
He is involved in the underground art world in Japan, dance, ...more
This is a memoir, by the editor of the New York Review of Books, which takes us largely to his life in Japan, between 1975 and 1981.
Read More Book Reviews on my blog It's Good To Read
Summary
A restless, bored, middle-class youth in the Netherlands, Buruma felt that he never fit in to his own society, that he was always on the fringes, the outsider looking in. He travels to Japan, where he explores both his emerging self, and the Japanese film and theatre culture.
Main Character:
The author Ian Bu ...more
Read More Book Reviews on my blog It's Good To Read
Summary
A restless, bored, middle-class youth in the Netherlands, Buruma felt that he never fit in to his own society, that he was always on the fringes, the outsider looking in. He travels to Japan, where he explores both his emerging self, and the Japanese film and theatre culture.
Main Character:
The author Ian Bu ...more
“Despite the extraordinary spread of certain aspects of Japanese culture — sushi, manga, Pokémon — Japan still is an insular nation, not much understood in the rest of the world. This opens up great opportunities to a writer, who knows Japan even a little bit, for so much still needs to be explained.” This explains what Ian Buruma is known for, and how I came to hear about this book.
I found this book a treasure, containing nuggets of information so niche — in the field of theatre; culture; avant ...more
I found this book a treasure, containing nuggets of information so niche — in the field of theatre; culture; avant ...more
A Tokyo Romance (2018) is Ian Buruma's memoir of his six years in Japan. He moved to Tokyo in 1975 when he was 23 and studied cinema at Nichidai in Ekoda, then met author and film historian Donald Ritchie, director Akira Kurosawa, Yoshiko “Shirley” Yamaguchi, and a hodgepodge of other artists and avant-garde theater performers as he refined his spoken Japanese. Buruma covers an array of topics, including the "role" of the gaijin in Japan and also immersion of the outsider into Japanese culture (
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Sep 09, 2018
Marija S.
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
history-politics-culture
This is a memoir. A subjective, peculiar, artsy, anecdotal recollection of the author's youth, a rambling search for outlines of his own identity in a city that de facto does not exist anymore. Anyone picking it up with expectations to be presented with a flattering, familiar picture book of Japan or Tokyo just because of the title is bound to be disappointed.
Having said that, by reading this book, you get a unique chance to immerse into the life of one most unusual characters (just check Ian B ...more
Having said that, by reading this book, you get a unique chance to immerse into the life of one most unusual characters (just check Ian B ...more
This book was an easy read, and it was well-enough written, giving some interesting insights on Japanese culture and what was happening socially in Tokyo in the late 70's. Ian Buruma lived in Japan for 6 years, but he says he didn't keep a diary and he didn't write many letters during that time. He had only photos and his memory. Perhaps that's why the book seems to be lacking any narrative. The book is more about other people—mainly the literati he hung out with—than himself. Buruma spends most
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"Mimicking Japanese figures of speech, or even adopting the physical mannerisms that go with a language—the bobbing of the head in half bows when speaking on the phone, smiling all the while—sometimes made me feel like an actor in real life. One would like to think that operating in a different culture is enriching. And so it is. But there are moments when the performer in a foreign language feels that he is leaving something of himself behind, or, to put it differently, that the foreign languag
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Sep 03, 2018
Carla Patterson
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
2018-reading-challenge
Quite interesting to hear about people and places I am familiar with due to my own time learning Japanese language and culture... but also, to read about aspects of the art and theater scene I would never have been aware of. I totally understand the Gaijin disease even though I never lived in Japan (spent a couple of nights in Tokyo on the way to and from Hong Kong, where I lived for a year but that's it). For a while I seemed to be 'Turning Japanese' (as the song says), but it was never going t
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A lot of interesting history around Japanese Cinema of the 70s, and the context around that. Me and all of the other people going to Japan Society screenings will feel more confident reading this book. On the other hand, I do think Mr. Buruma could have been more sensitive or reflective on his...sex tourism type activities in Japan. There's a point about 1/3 of the way through the book where he rather uncritically makes the analogy that the desire to have sex with a japanese person (women? mostl
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3.5 stars
“You know,” he said, before we parted company at the Hongo subway station, “you have to be a romantic to live in Japan. A person who feels complete, who does not question who he is, or his place in the world, will dislike it here. To be constantly exposed to such a radically different culture becomes unbearable. But to a romantic, open to other ways of being, Japan is full of wonders. Not that you will ever belong here. But that will set you free. And freedom is better than belonging. Y ...more
“You know,” he said, before we parted company at the Hongo subway station, “you have to be a romantic to live in Japan. A person who feels complete, who does not question who he is, or his place in the world, will dislike it here. To be constantly exposed to such a radically different culture becomes unbearable. But to a romantic, open to other ways of being, Japan is full of wonders. Not that you will ever belong here. But that will set you free. And freedom is better than belonging. Y ...more
Having lived and study in Japan, I initially had trouble relating to the author's engagement in the Tokyo arts community and the seeming view that it represented a foreigner's typical experience in Japan. There is an objective, nonchalance description of some disturbing art he experienced. However, he did win me over as the book progressed and I felt his memoir did capture the distinctness of Japan and a foreigner's inability to be accepted by the Japanese and his attempts at "fitting in" while
...more
Buruma has written some very good books but this is not one of them. Buruma is an essayist who always keeps an objective distance and not an author about deeply personal matters. Moreover, the most important anecdotes about his stay in Japan, such his work in the theater of Kara Juro, have already been included in Behind the Mask, this book adds little. And what it adds is a shameful anecdote about Buruma and fellow-students misbehaving and being rude to their Japanese hosts, an unfunny episode
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Great musings on the nature of being an expat in Japan, also great stuff on Donald Richie, of whom I'm a big fan. Buruma spent a lot of time with experimental theater troupes in 1970s Japan, and while the stories of these adventures are well told and hit on bigger themes (expats, arts, cultural transfer, Japan in that era), those theater figures will be abstruse to most, so not exactly spellbinding.
Other reviews say the author has written these things before in his other works, but this was my first encounter with him. Maybe the other books are better, but I'm wary. Perhaps it's not fair I wanted a deeper portrait of Japan, but I felt like I read a lot of well-told gossip about alternative performance scenes. I'm not sure the stories add a lot of depth to what is already known about these creators. I just kept waiting for more.
2.5 stars. It was promising in the beginning and I endured because I lived in Japan around the same time the author was there, so places and people he mentioned were familiar. But for those who have never been to Tokyo or Japan, it would be rather boring as he spends on Japanese films and film makers, theatre influencers most of the time in this book. It's his passion so if you like Japanese films from 1950-70's that's fine, but the book wasn't for me.
I know you're not supposed to judge a book by it's cover BUT I bought this book solely based on the name and the cool-looking cover. I kind of assumed it would be another story about the ways in which a white man goes to Japan, finds the people and the food amazing, parties and uses his 'foreignness' to his advantage, then writes about the experience. I was not far off.
It's true that I wasn't aware of the scene in Tokyo related to the adult-themed live performances and specialized intricate dan ...more
It's true that I wasn't aware of the scene in Tokyo related to the adult-themed live performances and specialized intricate dan ...more
Mar 10, 2018
Jenny T.
rated it
it was ok
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
non-fiction,
first-reads
This is a memoir about a "gaijin" (a white person) in Japan in the late '70s. I was surprised at the contemporary films, theater, and art scene described (at times reminiscent of what I've read about the Andy Warhol scene at the Factory in its outrageousness). Ultimately everything had a foreign feel, but what resonated for me was the attempted immersion into another culture described in this book.
Thanks to First to Read- Penguin Books USA for the free copy of this book.
Thanks to First to Read- Penguin Books USA for the free copy of this book.
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