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Legless in Ginza: Orientating Japan
Legless in Ginza is a witty and idiosyncratic picture of Japan at a traumatic time in its history. Robin Gerster lived and worked in Tokyo while Japan was reverberating with the shocks and aftershocks of political, bureaucratic, financial and social scandal. Part travel book, part personal and professional memoir, part cultural study, Legless in Ginza also ponders the travel experience itself. How does an outsider orientate himself in Japan? How does he adapt the country to suit himself? What does it mean simply to be `away'? And what-and where-is the elusive place called Home?
256 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1999
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About the author
Robin Gerster
12 books2 followersRobin Gerster is an Australian author and academic, his main fields are the cultural histories of war and travel, and Western Representations of Japan. He published his PhD thesis as Big-noting: The Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing which went on to win The Age Book of the Year Award in the non-fiction category.
In the 1990s he held the Chair in Australian Studies at the University of Tokyo – an experience which led to the controversial travel book, Legless in Ginza: Orientating Japan (1999). His book, Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Australia and the Occupation of Japan, won the New South Wales Premier's Prize for Australian History in 2009, and was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Non-Fiction Book Award and the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History. It was republished in a new paperback edition, with an Afterword, in 2019.
He currently holds the position of Professor at the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University
In the 1990s he held the Chair in Australian Studies at the University of Tokyo – an experience which led to the controversial travel book, Legless in Ginza: Orientating Japan (1999). His book, Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Australia and the Occupation of Japan, won the New South Wales Premier's Prize for Australian History in 2009, and was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Non-Fiction Book Award and the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History. It was republished in a new paperback edition, with an Afterword, in 2019.
He currently holds the position of Professor at the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 8, 2017
The author sounds like he hated everything about Japan and his stay there, even when he, on occasions, said positive things about it. He hated so much that he turned into arrogant foreign travellers of whom he described so much in this book
August 14, 2024
As a person who has read many books about Japan and the Japanese over my life I have developed a theory about most foreign authors writing about the country. The theory is that it ‘whether an author has been in Japan for 30 days or 30 years, the observations they make about the ‘Japanese character’ are basically the same’. In other words, do we really need another book about Japanese culture and society and comparing it with our own.
So how does Robin Gerster shape up against the theory. Gerster is an Australian academic (or at least he was then) who spent two years as the Associate Professor of Australian Studies at Tokyo University between 1996 and 1998 and ‘Legless in Ginza’ about his experiences there. Here we go, I thought, an academic cocooned in Tokyo University who acknowledges that his Japanese language proficiency does not extend far beyond the apologies ‘sumimasen’ and ‘gomenasai’ – this should be an interesting ride.
Before even reading the Prologue I was struck by the Author’s note that parts of Chapters 2 & 3 had appeared in the journals Quadrant and Meanjin, an interesting contribution to each in that they are literary magazines on the opposite sides of the political spectrum (Quadrant right, Meanjin left). Looks like the author is trying to cover a few bases.
The prologue describes a miserable arrival at the train station nearest his university-supplied apartment which, despite the help of a colleague fluent in Japanese, they have trouble finding. Gerster continually refers to and also seems to fear the ‘Big One’ (earthquake) happening while he is in Tokyo to the point of obsession. It becomes something of a recurring theme throughout the book.
Chapter one pans out not much better as Gerster describes his colleague Ohara, an American mid-westerner fluent enough to teach Japanese students Japanese literature in their native language and who has dropped the apostrophe from his own Irish name. Ohara is divorced from his wife who ’…In a fit of idealistic passion he had married a comely (not a word you hear very often nowadays) sweet natured Japanese girl, but she had turned out to be a dragon and they had divorced…’ (p7) This one-way assessment of his ex-wife by a Ohara who is described a few sentences later as a ‘very large man, so large we could barely perform a 360-degree turn in the average Japanese room (p8). OK there’s a black mark perpetuating the sexist stereotype of Asian women being demure and ‘comely’ until they get their claws into a man. Particularly a white one.
The rest of the chapter is a litany of economic, corporate and political malfeasance and scandals seasoned with a list of horrible crimes, and I’m beginning to think I’d wasted my money (OK I did buy it in an op-shop) and the book would be a complete hatchet job on Japan.
Chapter two is a bit more positive as he starts talking about his work at Tokyo University (Todai) and although he has a typical jaundiced view of the state of English teaching in Japan and the personalities of some of his colleagues, its an illuminating read. Despite Todai being the most prestigious university in Japan perhaps in all of Asia, Gerster describes poor facilities at the campus where he works and a student body that, while being a meritocracy of the cream of High School graduates (supported by the best juku money can buy) is still hard graft compared with the children of really rich parents whose kids can afford to send attend expensive private universities with much better facilities. The vast majority of students at Todai hold down part time jobs which leave them little time for leisure activities and makes it difficult for them to concentrate in class. He describes to some extent the themes covered in the ‘Australian Studies’ course he taught. Major themes were the White Australia Policy and multiculturalism and I would have liked to have known more about his courses but then again perhaps not. Ultimately Gerster harbours something like affection for his students and the difficult life they lead and the expectations of them as students at Todai.
The remaining chapters are a bit of a travelogue as Gerster gives his impressions of various places he visited, generally with a less than positive attitude. For example, his take on the one famous site was “I even have limited recollection of the famous garden of Ryoan-ji the abstract garden par excellence, which according to my diaries I visited on three occasions just in case there was something I missed….What I can recall is sneaking out the back of a meditation hall, to check the amount of yen in my wallet, counting the cost of looking at a few rocks placed in a sea of gravel. Call this the price of Kyoto.” Sinking the boot in further he says that Kyoto’s “mystique as the epitome of ‘Japaneseness’ can be extremely annoying to the Tokyo resident, irritated that the capital city takes second place culturally to a provincial, insular has-been like Kyoto, now a mere suburb of Osaka.” While personally I would rather spend time exploring Tokyo over Kyoto, and I have never actually lived in Tokyo, I would be surprised whether this opinion was commonly held by residents of that city.
While it is one person’s reflection of a couple of years in the country and to my mind an overly negative one there is still value as a counter to the sometimes gushing writing about the country. As Gerster says himself “…there is plenty (of the swooning, salivating kind of writing about Japan) anyway; more than enough for me to want to add to it.”
While I like Japan myself, I’m not averse to reading about the less picturesque aspects of its people, culture and places. However, I’d recommend the books of Alan Booth (‘The Roads to Sata’ and ‘Looking for the Lost’) where the author spoke the language, was deeply immersed in Japanese culture, and presented any negative experiences in a way that was still sympathetic to the country. So perhaps my initial hypothesis is wrong. It is not that the difference between two years and twenty years living in a country results in strikingly different observations, but the extra time and understanding mean that these observations can be expressed with a lot more empathy to the culture itself.
So how does Robin Gerster shape up against the theory. Gerster is an Australian academic (or at least he was then) who spent two years as the Associate Professor of Australian Studies at Tokyo University between 1996 and 1998 and ‘Legless in Ginza’ about his experiences there. Here we go, I thought, an academic cocooned in Tokyo University who acknowledges that his Japanese language proficiency does not extend far beyond the apologies ‘sumimasen’ and ‘gomenasai’ – this should be an interesting ride.
Before even reading the Prologue I was struck by the Author’s note that parts of Chapters 2 & 3 had appeared in the journals Quadrant and Meanjin, an interesting contribution to each in that they are literary magazines on the opposite sides of the political spectrum (Quadrant right, Meanjin left). Looks like the author is trying to cover a few bases.
The prologue describes a miserable arrival at the train station nearest his university-supplied apartment which, despite the help of a colleague fluent in Japanese, they have trouble finding. Gerster continually refers to and also seems to fear the ‘Big One’ (earthquake) happening while he is in Tokyo to the point of obsession. It becomes something of a recurring theme throughout the book.
Chapter one pans out not much better as Gerster describes his colleague Ohara, an American mid-westerner fluent enough to teach Japanese students Japanese literature in their native language and who has dropped the apostrophe from his own Irish name. Ohara is divorced from his wife who ’…In a fit of idealistic passion he had married a comely (not a word you hear very often nowadays) sweet natured Japanese girl, but she had turned out to be a dragon and they had divorced…’ (p7) This one-way assessment of his ex-wife by a Ohara who is described a few sentences later as a ‘very large man, so large we could barely perform a 360-degree turn in the average Japanese room (p8). OK there’s a black mark perpetuating the sexist stereotype of Asian women being demure and ‘comely’ until they get their claws into a man. Particularly a white one.
The rest of the chapter is a litany of economic, corporate and political malfeasance and scandals seasoned with a list of horrible crimes, and I’m beginning to think I’d wasted my money (OK I did buy it in an op-shop) and the book would be a complete hatchet job on Japan.
Chapter two is a bit more positive as he starts talking about his work at Tokyo University (Todai) and although he has a typical jaundiced view of the state of English teaching in Japan and the personalities of some of his colleagues, its an illuminating read. Despite Todai being the most prestigious university in Japan perhaps in all of Asia, Gerster describes poor facilities at the campus where he works and a student body that, while being a meritocracy of the cream of High School graduates (supported by the best juku money can buy) is still hard graft compared with the children of really rich parents whose kids can afford to send attend expensive private universities with much better facilities. The vast majority of students at Todai hold down part time jobs which leave them little time for leisure activities and makes it difficult for them to concentrate in class. He describes to some extent the themes covered in the ‘Australian Studies’ course he taught. Major themes were the White Australia Policy and multiculturalism and I would have liked to have known more about his courses but then again perhaps not. Ultimately Gerster harbours something like affection for his students and the difficult life they lead and the expectations of them as students at Todai.
The remaining chapters are a bit of a travelogue as Gerster gives his impressions of various places he visited, generally with a less than positive attitude. For example, his take on the one famous site was “I even have limited recollection of the famous garden of Ryoan-ji the abstract garden par excellence, which according to my diaries I visited on three occasions just in case there was something I missed….What I can recall is sneaking out the back of a meditation hall, to check the amount of yen in my wallet, counting the cost of looking at a few rocks placed in a sea of gravel. Call this the price of Kyoto.” Sinking the boot in further he says that Kyoto’s “mystique as the epitome of ‘Japaneseness’ can be extremely annoying to the Tokyo resident, irritated that the capital city takes second place culturally to a provincial, insular has-been like Kyoto, now a mere suburb of Osaka.” While personally I would rather spend time exploring Tokyo over Kyoto, and I have never actually lived in Tokyo, I would be surprised whether this opinion was commonly held by residents of that city.
While it is one person’s reflection of a couple of years in the country and to my mind an overly negative one there is still value as a counter to the sometimes gushing writing about the country. As Gerster says himself “…there is plenty (of the swooning, salivating kind of writing about Japan) anyway; more than enough for me to want to add to it.”
While I like Japan myself, I’m not averse to reading about the less picturesque aspects of its people, culture and places. However, I’d recommend the books of Alan Booth (‘The Roads to Sata’ and ‘Looking for the Lost’) where the author spoke the language, was deeply immersed in Japanese culture, and presented any negative experiences in a way that was still sympathetic to the country. So perhaps my initial hypothesis is wrong. It is not that the difference between two years and twenty years living in a country results in strikingly different observations, but the extra time and understanding mean that these observations can be expressed with a lot more empathy to the culture itself.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews