Tokyo

by Donald Richie

Donald Richie takes the reader on a revealing tour of the different districts of Japan's capital city. Starting from the original centre of Tokyo – the Imperial Palace – Richie branches outwards, taking in other areas such as Yoshiwara, the original red-light district, and Ginza, the world-famous shipping street. The author has kept a diary for the entire time he has lived in Tokyo, and excerpts from it provide on-the-spot insights into the significance of fashions and fads in Japanese culture (for example the recent Tamagochi craze), as well as the various aspects of life in a small neighborhood. Richie gives a real sense of how Japanese society has changed since the Second World War, yet remained rooted in its past.

With the eclectic eye and ear of a film-maker, Richie describes the flavor and idiosyncrasies of this chaotic, teeming city. Tokyo is illustrated with 30 intriguing photographs by Seattle-based photographer, Joel Sackett.

Genres: Japan, Travel, History, Nonfiction, Urban, Cities, Japanese Literature

124 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1999

About the author

Donald 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

Reviews

[Katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very interesting. He writes it in a manner that mimics the way the city of Tokyo was built, from the inner Imperial Palace out. It was the first time in a good long while I needed to look up a word in the dictionary, which I loved. It was slightly academic, but that was too be expected since I snagged it from my last house in Seattle where someone who was obviously studying East Asia at the University of Washington lived. The photographs are by Seattle-based Joel Sackett and are equally excellent in material and style.

The book is a bit outdated and sometimes it was difficult to follow the timeline.

Overall, an exemplary read on my new home.

[Marija S.]

A bonbon of a book (note, I am very biased when it comes to Tokyo)

[Jason Keenan · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://101booksjapan.blogspot.ca/

It's common to get nostalgic. It seems there are entire industries based on looking back 50 years, and lamenting the damage progress has done in consuming what made the past a golden age.

Donald Richie's Tokyo: A View of the City is just this kind of look back from circa 1999 - a look at the culture and every day life that built the core neighbourhoods of Tokyo, what had gone, what had come, and what was just ahead.

Many comments about this book talk about it starting at the core (the Imperial Palace) and tracing the story of the city out in concentric circles. I didn't really see that.

But what I did see were wonderful historical strata of parts of this great city - Ginza, Shinjuku, Asakusa, Uedo. It's all a little more in depth (and filled with lament) that Richie's Tokyo Megacity massive picture-book from 2010.

It's a worthwhile look into this great city's past, even if there is much exciting from looking at today forward.

[Avi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent light overview of Tokyo. Also finally answered my puzzlement over the lack of greenery there (land value is crazy expensive, so trees get cut).

[Arif Khan · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Donald Richie is your man." - A.O. Scott, and the Japanese Cinema Club

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Topographics was a placewriting series launched by British publisher Reaktion in the 1990s. Tokyo-based cultural critic Donald Richie contributed this fine portrait of a city that was still relatively unknown in the west. Tokyo: A View of the City recycles much of its content from earlier Richie collections such as A Lateral View. Today, it reads like a relic of an era when “Tokyo” was synonymous with “the Japanese” and could be poeticised for a western audience with a certain unselfconscious gaze. Richie himself alludes to this, noting that Tokyo offers “the ultimate liberty of finding everything other than oneself.” Some parts have dated badly, but Richie’s writings on the pleasures of the street, the neglect of architectural heritage, and Tokyoites’ distaste for the suburbs still ring true. The 1999 edition has a striking design featuring Joel Sackett’s monochrome images.

[Iván]

Comparada con muchas otras poblaciones de Europa y Asia, Tokio es una ciudad relativamente joven. Hacia 1457, el samurái y poeta Ota Dokan construyó en una elevación sobre la actual bahía de Tokio un castillo que se convertiría en el primero de los asentamientos realmente importantes del área. Su castillo cayó ante los embistes del daimio o señor feudal Toyotomi Hideyoshi, quien después de derribarlo dejó las tierras en manos del guerrero Tokugawa Ieyasu para tener libertad de movimiento en Kioto, por entonces capital del país. Ieyasu no tardó en consolidar su poder y elevar un nuevo castillo en el viejo emplazamiento, con lo que dio inicio al último de los tres gobiernos militares conocidos como sogunatos que hasta 1868 ejercieron su dominio sobre el archipiélago japonés. La ciudad que creció a su alrededor, bautizada con el nombre de Edo, se estableció durante un periodo de más de trescientos años como centro de poder por encima de la verdadera capital, residencia del emperador.

Continúa... https://formasdedistorsionarelmundo.w...