Alex Kerr

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 show more 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 show less

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 show more 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. show less

A bitter elegy for an incontinent nation that happily abandons its architectural and natural heritage without any thought or even much regret. Captures a people in the grip of a very depressing neophilia.

An analysis of what went wrong with Japan's growth in the 1990s and beyond. The author calls out bureaucratically driven construction of useless monuments, cronyism, fake financials, environmental degradation and isolationism. Some arguments were more about the author's preferences, eg. cinema, Hello Kitty. The outlook was depressing bu it made me wonder what has transpired for Japan since this book was written in 2001. It predicted more decades of stagnation for Japan -- which has pretty show more much occurred (as of this writing in 2019) with the addition of the Global Financial Crisis (2007-2008) and the Fukushima nuclear disaster (2011). Concerning the latter, the book specifically mentions a culture of shortfalls and cover-ups concerning safety in the Japanese nuclear power industry, and talks about the Tokai nuclear accident in Tokyo in 1999 (at that time the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl; since eclipsed by Fukushima). show less