Lost Japan

by Alex Kerr

1996

Description

Recounting his personal experiences of Japan over 30 years, Kerr warns that much value is being lost under a tide of change.

Library's review

Originally written in Japanese, this passionate, vividly personal book draws on the author's experiences in Japan over thirity years. Alex Kerr takes us on a backstage tour, as he explores the ritualised world of Kabuki, retraces his initiation into Tokyo's boardrooms during the heady Bubble Years,

tells how he stumbled on a hidden valley that became his home...and exposes the environmental and cultural destruction that is the other face of contemporary Japan.

Winner of Japan's 1994 Shincho Gakugei Literature Prize.

'This deeply personal witness to Japan's willgul loss of its traditional culture s at the same time an immensely valuable evaluation of just what that culture was'-Donald Richie of the Japan Times

'Alex Kerr's book carries a powerful message applicable to all cultures. He is on a life-long quest for beauty'-Issey Miyake

Contents

Preface
Chapter 1 Looking for a caslte
Chapter 2 Iya Valley
Chapter 3 Kabuki
Chapter 4 Art collecting
Chapter 5 China versus Japan
Chapter 6 Calligraphy
Chapter 7 Tenmangu
Chapter 8 Trammell Crow
Chapter 9 Kyoto
Chapter 10 The road to Nara
Chapter 11 Outer Nara
Chapter 12 Osaka
Chapter 13 The Literati
Chapter 14 Last glimpse
Glossary

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User reviews

LibraryThing member mrtall

Lost Japan, Alex Kerr’s book of essays on life in Japan, is difficult to review.

I found it started well, with several essays written in a highly-personal and engaging style that reflected the early enthusiasm of Kerr’s expat life. (It’s certainly worth noting that Kerr’s Japanese language

skills are such that he wrote this book in Japanese; it was translated into English by someone else.) Kerr communicates effectively both the hideousness of Japan’s cityscapes and the intense minimalist beauty of the oases of the ‘old Japan’ that are carefully tended and maintained, not least by Japanophilic expats like himself.

Kerr is also good on plumbing the secrets of the Japanese psyche; his portraits of Japanese people and their lives certainly ring true, although I’ve no real criteria by which to judge them beyond a few short visits to Japan.

But as the book wore on, I found the essays harder and harder to get into. One problem was repetition: Kerr writes in a discursive style, often making many thematic turns within a single essay. This leads, inevitably, to the same themes coming up again and again.

Another difficulty I had was with Kerr’s tone, which becomes increasingly smug as the book wears on. It peaks in the book’s penultimate essay, ‘The Literati’, among whose members Kerr surely numbers himself. This may well be true, but it’s not really the most edifying or enjoyable subject to read about.

Still, I’d recommend reading at least the essays on Kabuki, China vs Japan, Kyoto and Osaka.

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LibraryThing member skinglist

Lost or non-existent, I'm really not sure which. So long has passed since Alex Kerr wrote this book that I'm not sure even his Japan exists anymore, but the book is still a great read. Loved the Osaka chapters and the acknowledgemnent that you can be a Japan-o-phile without worshipping the

place.

The Japanese have always tended to treat foreigners like creatures from another universe.

100% agreed, a lot of Alex Kerr's 'existing Japan' thoughts are less relevant now but that, still entirely true. It's part of what I love about the country though, it really is. As is the Law of Palaver. I think if someone were ever to just stand up and make a decision, the others around would faint from surprise, it's just not how things are done.

And as I said earlier, I agree entirely with his thoughts on Osaka. The trip to Kyushu taught me that really, Japan isn't all that ugly. But you know what, I wouldn't live anywhere else. I love it here. Bumps and all. "It is the last bastion against the sea of ordinariness sweeping over Japan, and when it goes there will be many who miss it. In the words of Tamasaburo, 'The decline of Kyoto I can live with. But please, please, Osaka never change!'" One of the things I missed when I was gone was the unique culture, the dancers outside work, the goths at Osaka Castle Park on Sundays, the fun that is Osaka.

Love this country I really do.

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LibraryThing member anikins

alex kerr's writing is like riding the train to visit the quiet elegance of old japan, stopping at times for reality checks--that such elegance is in danger of complete ruin.

LibraryThing member soylentgreen23

I felt drained of all emotion by the end of Kerr's book; living in Japan when I read it, it suddenly seemed as if the culture around me was visibly decaying.

"Lost Japan" is a most touching book, filled with personal emotion and reminiscences; it is a powerful journey through the Japan of old, the

romantic land of the rising sun that so few remember, and fewer will have the chance to appreciate. Very sad.

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LibraryThing member amyeve

Bored in a school library, I picked this up and ended up having it checked out for several months. I went to Japan the next year, and studied Japanese from that year onward, all because of this book. It's a goal of mine to own it.

LibraryThing member TheLoisLevel

I just finished reading a book called Lost Japan finally after working on it for a month. A teacher at my school recommended it when I first arrived. I found it a very interesting book, and I think I might use it with my 12th graders, for whom I'm developing a unit on literary nonfiction. In this

book, Kerr writes about his life in Japan and how the culture has changed in the last 20 years. Well, often he actually seems to be saying that Japan is losing its culture. He ends on a bright note, however, by suggesting that Japan is open to the development of a new culture that will emerge from the old.

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LibraryThing member miketheriley

Bit pretentious, but some interesting comment about the changing of Japan. Not as good as his other book Dogs and Demons

LibraryThing member tracyfox

Lost Japan is a bit dated, but a worthwhile look at how Japan's rush to modernity is changing its culture and landscape. Alex Kerr has a deep love of traditional Japanese arts. He has thatched the roof on his Japanese house in the Iya Valley, befriended Kabuki actors in Tokyo, collected Japanese

art in Kyoto, stayed up late doing calligraphy in his temple-side house, worked for a boisterous Texan looking to tap into the Japanese real estate boom and visited every nook and cranny of the country. I appreciated his insights into how the traditional arts of Japan evolved from Chinese origins, changed to reflect changing Japanese culture and are now losing ground to the onslaught of late twentieth-century culture.

The author shares my deep love of the natural world and throughout the book openly laments the heavy toll that Japan's unprecedented economic growth took on mountains, forests, beaches and the viewscape. At points in the book, I almost shed my desire to visit Japan, feeling that all that was left was garish neon, pachinko parlors and electrical pylons marching up every mountainside. However, the final essays turn a corner and provide a glimpse into a Japan that still holds much interest for me -- from the refined gardens of Kyoto to the temples of Nara and the inspiring countryside that frames the journey. All in all, a recommended read for those interested in learning about Japanese culture from a sensitive, but Western, point of view.

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LibraryThing member drsabs

This short book is a great way to get into key aspects of traditional Japanese art and culture reflecting both the author’s scholarship and personal experience. It covers the cultural mores of Kyoto society, the structure of traditional Japanese houses, calligraphy, the significance of kabuki,

the Chinese influence on Zen Buddhism, life in the city of Osaka, and much more. Although the author is American, he also has a great nostalgia for old Japan and frequently bewails modern Japanese tendencies that are destroying both the past and the remaining traditions as well as the beauty of nature. This does not prevent him from relating humorous anecdotes. Several interesting characters make appearances including: David Kidd, the expert in Chinese art; Trammell Crow, the real estate developer; and Ian Fleming's wife (when the author was at Oxford), as well as prominent Japanese practitioners of the artistic and cultural traditions with whom the author has established friendships.

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LibraryThing member questbird

'Lost Japan' talks about the author's life in Japan and his pursuit of his aesthetic ideal, which he found to some extent in Japan's ancient arts: tea ceremony, kabuki theatre and calligraphy. But the book is entitled 'lost' because the author perceives the decline of these traditional art forms

and their practitioners. There is a melancholy for their departure and a lament about what is replacing them -- a modern, soulless, bureacratised, synthetic existence. This modern Japanese life is what the author excoriates in his later diatribe, 'Dogs and Demons', which I read first, but 'Lost Japan' is a more balanced work. It was helped too by it's updated foreword, which hinted that the author had achieved a measure of equilibrium after his bitterness of the early 2000s.

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