Read A Tokyo Romance Ian Buruma Books

Product details Paperback 256 pages Publisher Atlantic Books; Main edition (March 7, 2019) Language English ISBN-10 1782398023

A Tokyo Romance Ian Buruma Books Reviews

• Ian Buruma has always been one of my favorite writers, especially in the way he uses insightful and precise language to capture the personalities of those he observes. In this case, through those characters and his relationships with them during the years he lived in Japan, he manages to capture an entire oeuvre as well, the avant-garde fringe theater and arts culture of Tokyo during the 1970s.
  
  I first lived in Japan as an undergraduate during the early ‘sixties, more than a decade earlier, but found in Buruma’s memoir many similarities in our experiences - and the lessons learned therefrom. Even within the more prosaic educational world of the university I attended, it didn’t take long to realize “once a gaijin, always a gaijin” was a necessary dictum to accept, however much one might wish otherwise.
  
  During my forty-plus years of teaching Japanese history at the university level that followed, I witnessed student initial notions of Japan shift from images of WWII, geisha, samurai and the atom bomb to fears of “Japan as Number One” and on to the Soft Power influences of manga, anime, Miyazaki and Murakami.
  
  Buruma reminds us all that there’s still much more to know about Japan beyond even these changeable and superficial idealized attitudes and images. On the basis of shared similarities and insightful observations alone, I can not recommend this memoir highly enough. It brought back memories and provided both confirmation of my own experiences and insights into a layer of Tokyo life and culture, recognizable but unexperienced.
• What a marvelously evocative memoir! With insight, candor, and humility, Buruma guides us through the teeming world of Japan's late '70's avant-garde. It's a fascinating slice of post-War Japanese history that's been right under our noses, yet largely unknown. A gifted narrator, Buruma expertly sets the scene and shows us the places and personalities from this world that shaped his growth.
  
  Buruma is particularly good in two tricky areas. First, he does a great job conveying the subtleties of being a foreigner in Japan -- where one is lionized, after a fashion, and yet always kept at arm's length (then and now, it must be said). Buruma gets the balance just right in explaining both the attractions and the deep frustrations of the gaijin's experience. Second, he describes with tact and honesty the libidinal pull between East and West, a complex dynamic that could so easily descend into stereotypes, but in his telling never does.
  
  "Romance" reminded me of John David Morley's unjustly neglected, "Pictures from the Water Trade," an autobiographical novel that plumbs many of the same depths. Both are coming of age stories that sparkle in their elucidation of Japan.
• Buruma, of Dutch and British background, lived 6 years in Japan in the 70’s. He was a photographer and writer there, attaching himself to various Japanese groups and observing their lives and culture (now the editor of The New York Review). The book is lively, full of personal experience and insight. I found it convincing and great fun to read!
• Great author, never disappoints.
• An extraordinary and honest insight of the less spoken of atmosphere of the creative underground of Tokyo in the 70's. All became somebodies!
• Loved every single page of this book. Great writer with an interesting perspective about our own cultural identity/identities in a foreign country. Recommended!
• A wonderfully written, intriguing, often amusing and surprising, and very frank memoir.
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