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The Donald Richie Reader: 50 Years of Writing on Japan
No one has written more, or more artfully, about Japan and Japanese culture than Donald Richie. Richie moved to Tokyo just after World War II. And he is still there, still writing. This book is the first compilation of the best of Richie's writings on Japan, with excerpts from his critical work on film (Richie helped introduce Japanese film to the West in the late 1950s) and his unpublished private journal, plus fiction, Zen musings, and masterful essays on culture, travel, people, and style. With a critical introduction and full bibliography. Donald Richie's many books include The Films of Akira Kurosawa, The Japanese Tattoo, and the PBS favorite The Inland Sea . Vienna resident Arturo Silva lived in Japan for 18 years. “To read [ The Donald Richie Reader and The Japan Journals ] is like diving for pearls. Dip into any part of them and you will surely find treasures about the cinema, literature, traveling, writing. The passages are evocative, erotic, playful, and often profound.” – Japanese Language and Literature
288 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2001
About the author
Donald Richie
108 books100 followersDonald 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
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
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 21, 2018
The greatest gaijin? Famous for introducing Japan's cinema to the West, but actually fewer than half of his thoughts are anything to do with that. Richie has an eC20th directness about describing other peoples - think Martha Gellhorn or Kipling - their 'pure skin', their atrocity-enabling 'innocence', their circuitousness and tribalism. (It is now sometimes inappropriate, sometimes oppressive to emphasise differences so.)
Similar to Hitchens in its consistent, adventurous aestheticism, though with much quieter prose; however, neither has that certain Alastair Reid transcendence. Minus a half for seriously ugly layout and typography, but I will seek out his real books.
In one sentence: Ah, so innocent, so subtle, so far from Ohio.
I cannot imagine Plato thriving here [Japan], with all his absolutes (“the truth,” “the beauty”)... Maybe that is why Japan is so backward (by comparison) in some areas: philosophy, diagnosis. And perhaps why it is so forward in others.
From the celebrated farting-contest scroll and the early illustrated He Gassen (The Fart Battle), up to such recent representations as the delightful farting games in Ozu Yazujiro's Ohayo, Japan's culture is filled with vivid examples... Farting is certainly included in the nature of man:
"And what is it you all
Are laughing at, may I ask?"
The retired master's fart.
Four or five people
Inconvenienced
By the horse farting
The long ferry ride.
Just here, I think, is the difference in attitude between Japan and the West. That a thing is is sufficient to warrant its notice, even celebration. The hypocrisy of the idealistic has not until recently infected Japan.  :In both cultures the fart is funny but only in Japan is its humanity acknowledged. This entails a full acceptance of the human state. There is even a rubric for such matters, the ningen-kusai ("smelling of humanity") and within it the hé (屁) takes an honorable place.
What do I want to be when I grow up? An attractive role would be that of the bunjin. He is the Japanese scholar who wrote and painted in the Chinese style, a literatus, something of a poetaster - a pose popular in the 18th century. I, however, would be a later version, someone out of the end of the Meiji, who would pen elegant prose and work up flower arrangements from dried grasses and then encourage spiders to make webs and render it all natural. For him, art is a moral force and he cannot imagine life without it. He is also the kind of casual artist who, after a day's work is done, descends into his pleasure park and dallies.
Similar to Hitchens in its consistent, adventurous aestheticism, though with much quieter prose; however, neither has that certain Alastair Reid transcendence. Minus a half for seriously ugly layout and typography, but I will seek out his real books.
In one sentence: Ah, so innocent, so subtle, so far from Ohio.
March 1, 2017
This was my introduction to Donald Richie, an expert on Japanese film and supposedly on Japanese culture and people. I discovered I did not like this person. In the Foreword, Arturo Silva says Richie is "an expert but with no pretense of being one" despite living in Japan for 50 years so far, but I found Richie made plenty of statements, some quite insulting, as though they were the truth about all Japanese people. He loved old Japan, did not like the "ugly" modern Japan rising from the ashes of WWII. I understood "ugly" to mean Westernized. Yet he stayed, always the "gaijin" foreigner and loving the freedom in being a perpetual outsider. And by "freedom," I understood him to mean he could behave as he wanted and he would be excused for his oddities and apparent ignorance, unlike in his birth country of the US. What fun! Apparently he appreciated being able to have lots of casual sex there (sex is a great souvenir of your travels).
He said things like for the Japanese "there is no god looking over his shoulder... consequentially there is no conscience," he may "feel ashamed but he cannot feel guilty" (p. 196). And "tattooed men must need a simplified life," because those tattoos ensured they would be restricted from life choices, since in Japan tattoos are taboo and signify you are a gangster (yakuza). Or Japanese think "the strong social rules we obey are necessary because otherwise we would not know who we were" (p. 95). Statements like that made me think Richie was full of himself.
On the other hand, Richie is a great writer, good with words and with many astute observations, some that opened my mind to new ways of thinking about certain aspects of Japanese culture and traditions. As an American, I do feel like Japan is an alien world, and I can appreciate how Richie examines everything as though he's found strange new insects. I just didn't like Richie as the person he came across as, and I didn't like when he made up denigrating (IMO) stories about why those people apparently all behave like they do.
He said things like for the Japanese "there is no god looking over his shoulder... consequentially there is no conscience," he may "feel ashamed but he cannot feel guilty" (p. 196). And "tattooed men must need a simplified life," because those tattoos ensured they would be restricted from life choices, since in Japan tattoos are taboo and signify you are a gangster (yakuza). Or Japanese think "the strong social rules we obey are necessary because otherwise we would not know who we were" (p. 95). Statements like that made me think Richie was full of himself.
On the other hand, Richie is a great writer, good with words and with many astute observations, some that opened my mind to new ways of thinking about certain aspects of Japanese culture and traditions. As an American, I do feel like Japan is an alien world, and I can appreciate how Richie examines everything as though he's found strange new insects. I just didn't like Richie as the person he came across as, and I didn't like when he made up denigrating (IMO) stories about why those people apparently all behave like they do.
March 5, 2022
Donald Richie is a fabulous writer, and although I enjoyed the snippets from his various books (many currently out-of-print), I prefer reading entire books. The layout of this book with the insets of one story placed within a different story made it difficult to read through without losing one’s place. Just a minor gripe. I suggest a new reader of Richie start with his Japan Journals instead of this book.
January 18, 2016
Donald Richie has lived in Japan since the aftermath of WWII and the reconstruction period. He is well known for his expertise on Japanese film. His descriptions of ancient Japanese ceremonies and customs are fascinating. My favorite was his account of participating in the mysterious Fuchu Festival of Darkness. A late summer festival, thousands of scantily-clad young men march throughout the night, crammed together chanting and swaying as one. Richie notes that his original panic of being trampled by the crowd subsided, and that "what had terrified me, now consoled me."
November 14, 2010
An excellent introduction to the writing of Donald Ritchie, and a perhaps perfect starting point for anyone unaware of this brilliantly original and versatile author. Yet it is only a starting point—highlights only of Richie’s more than half century of writing in and about Japan, that will surely leave you hungry to read more.
September 23, 2018
I must have bought this damned near a decade ago. It's good, but I'm a completist of sorts, so every time I picked it up and enjoyed a piece, that was followed by my buying the full book that that piece had come from...
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews