Japanese for Travellers: A Journey Through Modern Japan

by Katie Kitamura

A Japanese-American raised in California, 24-year old Katie Kitamura returns to Japan to discover the country she left behind.

Travelling across this foreign landscape, she visits middle-class gambling halls, fight stadiums and giant shopping meccas, luxury care homes and cramped apartments housing four generations under a single roof. And she wonders in which version of modern Japan she might have belonged.

Defined by its adventurous youth culture, but with the fastest-ageing population in the world, renowned for its strict social code, but producing the black-comedy violence of Battle Royale films, the Japan she discovers is an often contradictory land of Godzilla toys and war memorials, of futuristic manga characters and brightly coloured vending machines.

Genres: Japan, Travel, Nonfiction, History

272 pages, Paperback

First published April 5, 2007

About the author

Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel is Intimacies. One of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2021, it was longlisted for the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. It was also one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2021. In France, it won the Prix Litteraire Lucien Barriere, was a finalist for the Grand Prix de l’Heroine, and was nominated for the Prix Fragonard. Her previous novel, A Separation, was a finalist for the Premio von Rezzori and a New York Times Notable Book.

Her work has been translated into over 20 languages and is being adapted for film and television. She is a recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature as well as fellowships from the Lannan, Jan Michalski and Santa Maddalena Foundations. She teaches in the creative writing program at New York University. Her new novel, Audition, will be published by Riverhead Books in 2025.

Reviews

[Minerva · Rating 1 out of 5]

pointless

[Aida Saldana Hernandez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading about contemporary Japan through the eyes of the author. It's a book very well written.

[Safa Mohamed · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book touches on the unspoken language of Japane. The generational language that has been carrying on from old generations to current generations and all the little gestures that the author has noticed and concluded through her insider/outsider's intentive point of view. A very unique style of writing that almost threw me off except for my interest in the insight and the hidden messages kept me going on.

[أمة · Rating 2 out of 5]

You can tell this is a first book. With a more stern editor and cutting off about 50 pages, this could have been a 3+ star book. As it stands, there are moments where it shines, but it is not tight enough. Katie attempts to analyze everything and relate it all to history and family and Japan in a heavily descriptive style. Sometimes you see the parallels she draws, sometimes you don't. She is an amateur anthropologist here, trying to make sense of a country she half-knows, half-remembers. Would read movie reviews by the author, but wouldn't read this book a third time. I enjoyed her chapter on Pachinko parlors the most - her descriptions made me see the place and characters there vividly.

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