Alex Kerr

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 show more 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. 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.

I've read this book twice now - once in England (most recently) and once in Japan. I remember when I was in Japan how touched I was by Kerr's impassioned plea to save Japanese culture; seven years later I was left with exactly the same feeling.

However, I had to work to get where I am now with my understanding of this book. I reread it at a bad time - I was busy with my job, and my opinion of the book was clouded by nostalgic half-remembered details. I fought through the first couple of show more chapters, which deal with Kerr's renovation of an old Japanese house in the mountains, and of Japanese theatre - Kabuki and Noh - and I found it very difficult to keep my enthusiasm up. I could read ten pages in a sitting, and no more.

I did the best thing I could possibly do - I put the book down and decided to return to it at a later date.

That later date was today - and I finished it in a few short sittings, thoroughly captivated by Kerr's ideas and the way he expressed them. Suddenly, everything came together - the chapters seemed to be logically put together, where before there had seemed no sense to the order.

Everything became so much more interesting, and I simply had to read on and on. When I got to the last page, I even realised that the book itself had taken on the shape of the eaves of old Japanese temples - for chapters and chapters we had been heading down and down, to the earth, and then at the last second, a reprieve, a lightening: optimism. show less