Sata. In cammino per perdersi e ritrovarsi sulle vie meno battute del Giappone

by Alan Booth, Nicola Ferloni (Translator)

Un classico della letteratura di viaggio che ci accompagna nella magia del Giappone e la fa risuonare dentro di noi, un libro incantato che svela un mondo di armonie segrete

In un giorno di fine giugno, al culmine della stagione delle piogge, Alan Booth parte per un'impresa mai tentata prima: percorrere il Giappone a piedi, da un capo all'altro delle due isole estreme, da nord a sud, da Soya a Sata, coprendo una distanza di oltre 3000 chilometri. Sata è il capo dell'isola più a sud tra le quattro principali del Giappone. Ma è molto più di un luogo: rappresenta una sfida, un limite estremo ma anche un simbolo di un Paese cangiante che, tra luci e ombre, viaggia sempre sul filo tra antichità e progresso, tra spiritualità e ipermodernità. Perché durante questo viaggio su vie secondarie e poco battute, Booth - un vero animale da città, cresciuto a Londra e residente a Tokyo - scopre un universo incredibile e diverso e impara che le generalizzazioni, e dunque «i giapponesi», non esistono. Gli abitanti dell'arcipelago infatti sono «più di 120 milioni, hanno da zero a centodiciannove anni, popolano un territorio che si estende per ventuno gradi di latitudine e ventitré di longitudine e svolgono professioni che vanno dall'imperatore al guerrigliero urbano». Tra ryokan scalcinati, strade battute dal sole, montagne sacre e scogliere sferzate dal vento, l'autore apre una finestra sul Giappone più autentico. Quello che scopre è un universo magico, impregnato di valori antichi e tensioni mistiche - come quella tra giri , «il dovere» e ninjo , «le umane emozioni» - che convivono come molte anime nel popolo giapponese e nella sua natura straordinaria. Un viaggio a piedi in un Giappone magico all'insegna dell'amore per la scoperta e della capacità di stupirsi, per perdersi e ritrovarsi nel panorama luminoso e sfaccettato dell'umanità e del paesaggio nipponico.

Genres: Japan, Travel, Nonfiction, Asia, Memoir, History, Japanese Literature

365 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Alan Booth was born in London in 1946 and traveled to Japan in 1970 to study Noh theater. He stayed, working as a writer and film critic, until his death from cancer in 1993.

Reviews

[Kiekiat · Rating 4 out of 5]

'The Roads to Sata' is a minor travel classic and is the tale of Alan Booth's walk from Cape Sota, in Hokkaido, the northernmost island in Japan, to Cape Sata in Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four major islands--a distance stretching over 3200 kilometers. Booth made this four-month trek in 1977.

Roads to Sata is revered by many Asian travel writers, and for good reason. It is held in high-esteem because Booth was a superb writer and astute observer, as well as an erudite man who wore his vast erudition lightly. Booth died from colon cancer at age of 46, but left us with a couple books of sublime travel writing . Perhaps of all the travel writers who have scribbled musings about Japan, Booth may have come the closest in helping Western readers to understand that Japan can never really be understood. Implicit in Booth's book is the notion that while cultures can be described and experienced, perhaps none can be fully fathomed. Booth is the spiritual progeny of Lafcadio Hearn, another Westerner who lived many years in Japan and wrote with percipience about its culture. Perhaps what sets writers like Hearn and Booth apart is that they wrote almost solely out of curiosity and wonder, and did not start out with the mindset that Japan even needed to be understood.

One thing I liked in particular about The Roads to Sata is that Booth did not begin his book by giving any profound reasons for why he was undertaking this walk. No relationship had ended and he was not in the throes of some spiritual crisis that compelled him to journey two-thousand miles on foot to "sort out" his life. Booth loves Japan, and loves to wander and observe. At the time his travels began he had already been living in Tokyo for six years and was married to a Japanese wife. Booth grudgingly submits to an interview with a dogged Japanese reporter. When asked why he made the trip, Booth gives what I believe was an uncharacteristically pat justification:

Reporter--"Why did you decide to do it (make the trip) in the first place?"

Booth--"Because I'd lived in Japan for a quarter of my life and still didn't know whether I was wasting my time. I hoped that by taking four months off to do nothing but scrutinize the country I might come to grips with the business of living here, and get a clearer picture, for better or worse."

Reporter: "Have you managed to do that?"

Booth: "No."

Booth was also not shy to express his feelings about how well a foreigner could adjust to living in Japan:

Reporter: "Do you feel at home in Japan?"

Booth: "No, I think it would be a particularly thick-skinned foreigner who was able to do that."

Don't let Booth's supposed explanation fool you. He was also a newspaper reporter, and knew that reporters love sensible or provocative answers. All one has to do is read his book to realize that his reply about why he did the walk was pro forma.

Booth is actually something of a curmudgeon, in the best sense of that word. A couple themes that continually emerge throughout his journey include Japan's sometimes extreme xenophobia. Booth speaks fluent Japanese so is able to eavesdrop on conversations about him by unsuspecting Japanese, some of whom seem to have a prejudice that NO foreigner could ever learn to speak Japanese. He is laughed at and ridiculed by the natives and is often chased by groups of youth throwing taunts at him and mocking him if he does speak to them in Japanese. Booth also stays at ryokans, traditional Japanese Inns that usually offer "rustic" lodging and simple meals of fish and rice. Booth is often turned away at some ryokans because of being a gaijin (foreigner), or the innkeeper being unable to speak English or fearing Booth will not like the Japanese fare or will not be able to eat with chopsticks.

Booth also consistently notes how littered Japan was, along its coasts, its highways and even at sacred shrines. Booth loves to take dips in the ocean and several times emerges covered with oil or cutting himself on some sharp piece of detritus a previous visitor thoughtlessly left behind.

In fairness to what I've written above, Booth recounts numerous positive encounters with Japanese during his 128-day sojourn. Booth determines before his journey that he will accept no rides on any sort of conveyance except those necessary to take him from one island to another, i.e., ferries and trains. Booth's journey is not always the bucolic Appalachian trail journey of Bill Bryson's 'A Walk in the Woods.' Much of Booth's trip is alongside major highways and involves sometimes perilous excursions through long tunnels where he occasionally comes close to being sideswiped by speeding vehicles.

On many occasions, especially in inclement weather, Booth is offered rides by kindly Japanese, some of whom get quite chaffed when he explain to them that he prefers to walk. And Booth often looked pretty shopworn from hours trudging along polluted thoroughfares. Likewise, he is treated to many random acts of kindness during his travels. Strangers take the time and trouble to find a ryokan that will shelter him for the night. And he is welcomed at many drinking establishments where he is fond of singing Japanese folk songs, much to the amusement and delight of the locals.

What Booth shows us without needing to tell us is that Japan is not inscrutable due to some misguided Western notion of "Orientalism," as Edward Said called it in his book about Western attitudes to Asians. Instead, Booth depicts a Japan filled with the usual array of characters that comprise any large nation. The people may share a culture with some customs and traditions perplexing to Westerners (and some other Asian lands as well), but, as Booth notes:

"I have tried to avoid generalizations, particularly 'the Japanese.' " The Japanese are 120,000,000 people, ranging in age from 0 to 119, in geographical location across 21 degrees of latitude and 23 of longitude, and in profession from emperor to urban guerilla. This book is about my encounters with some twelve hundred businessmen, farmers, grandmothers, fishermen, housewives, shopkeepers, schoolchildren, soldiers, policemen, monks, priests, tourists, journalists, professors, laborers, maids, waiters, carpenters, teachers, innkeepers,potters, dancers, cyclists, students, truck drivers, Koreans, Americans, bar hostesses, professional wrestlers, government officials, hermits, drunks and tramps."

Read 'The Roads to Sata' and you will encounter all the above and more. The great Japanese haiku poet Matsuo Basho, himself an inveterate wanderer, the early 20th Century tanka poet Ishikawa Takuboku, the famous Kabuki play 'Kanjincho,' Eiheji, Soto Buddhist temple of the brilliant Zen master Dogen.

Think of not thinking.
How do you think of not thinking?
By not thinking.

Zen Master Dogen (1200-1253)

You'll also encounter Shinto shrines, Japan's officially designated "Three most beautiful places" and be with Booth as he encounters the kaleidoscopic range of humanity mentioned in his quote. It's a trip worth taking.

[Daren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan booth is British, and prior to his walk (in 1977), he had spent 7 years living in Tokyo, with his Japanese wife. Having what appeared to be a very fluent use of Japanese, he decided to walk from the northern most point to the southern most point of Japan, to interact with the local people, and try to get a more thorough understanding of Japan.

For 128 days, over 3300 kilometres, the author walked (the backroads where possible) and interacted with the village people. He stayed mostly in ryokan - a Japanese inn, for locals more than tourists.

Booth has found a writing style which accounts for the constant repetition (eat breakfast - find coffee - walk - find lunch and beer - walk - find ryokan and beer - eat dinner and beer - sleep. Repeat 127 times) without punishing the reader. In hindsight, it is not clear how he managed this -because with descriptions of his daily surrounding, some light history, some relevant traditions and culture, some interactions with the people of his day, it should not be as good a read as this was!

Setting out from Cape Soya, heading south, this book was an often amusing read, Booths writing highlighting some of the more strange conversations with the people, and many of these emphasised how he really got into the rural backroads of Japan. Through poor weather, we share his fatigue, as soaking wet, he heads onwards from lunch for another 4 hour slog to the village he plans to stay. Through the foot-wary pain, the tedium of school children yelling "gaijin, gaijin, gaijin", and people speaking about him, unaware he can understand them perfectly well. And yet, Booths appreciation and respect for the Japanese is obvious throughout, even at his lowest ebb.

Two things were impressive in this book - the authors self motivation and determination (how many lifts was he offered in the rain); and his prodigious consumption of beer.

4 stars for me. [Subsequently upgraded to 5 stars, as this book stays with me.]



A couple of the more amusing parts quoted below:

P102: Conversation in a bar (takes place in Japanese):
"Ah, so you have been hitch-hiking."
"No, I've been walking."
"Yes, yes, yes. And what a beautiful country Japan is to walk in. But have you found it easy to obtain rides?"
"I haven't had any rides."
"Oh, come, come, come."
"I've walked."
"Yes, yes. But what about the longer distances?"
"Perhaps you haven't understood me..."
"Yes, yes, yes. How marvellous to be British. I love the British."
...
"But how far have you hitch-hiked?"

P108: Arriving at a ryokan (inn):
"Are there any rooms free?" I asked with an encouraging smile.
"Well, yes there are, but we haven't got any beds. We sleep on mattresses on the floor."
"Yes, I know," I said. "I have lived in Japan for seven years."
"And you won't be able to eat the food."
"Why, what's the matter with it?"
"It's fish."
"But I like fish."
"But it's raw fish."
"Look, I have lived in Japan for seven years. My wife is Japanese. I like raw fish."
"But I don't think we've got any knives and forks.
"Look..."
"And you can't use chopsticks."
"Of course I can. I've lived..."
"But it's a tatami-mat room, and we don't have any armchairs."
"Look..."
"And there's no shower in the bathroom. It's an o-furo."
"I use chopsticks at home. I sit on tatami. I eat raw fish. I use an o-furo. I have lived in Japan for seven years. That's nearly a quarter of my life. My wife..."
"yes," moaned the woman, "but we can't speak English."
"I don't suppose that will bother us," I sighed. "We have been speaking Japanese for the last five minutes".

[Maru Kun · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first visited Japan twenty five years ago children would point at me and shout “Gaijin da! Gaijin da!” – “Look, a foreigner! A foreigner!”. If I walked round a Kyoto temple whole classes of middle school students would crowd around to have their picture taken and practice their English. I was just like a film star. Of course, I didn’t let it go to my head. Not in the slightest.

Well, 2015 is the first year Japan has seen a tourist surplus since the fifties; more people spent money visiting Japan than the Japanese spent travelling abroad. It’s been well over a decade since anyone pointed their finger at me and shouted “Gaijin da! Gaijin da”. I haven’t been refused entry to tiny backstreet bars nor praised for being able to use chopsticks so well for just as long. I’m just not special any more.

But when I feel nostalgic and want to return to the times when, as a foreigner in Japan, I was just that little bit out of the ordinary I can pick up Alan Booth’s outstanding travelogue recounting his trip walking the length of Japan back in the 1980s.

Free of references to cosplay, piccachu, AKB48 or kawaii things in general I can return to a more simple time, a time when, as Alan Booth relates, a fluent Japanese speaking foreigner used to be able to have long debates with hotel owners about whether or not they could speak Japanese; a time when a foreign guest would have to explain that they had lived in Japan for a decade, understood Japanese customs and manners and were able to digest fish, which was also widely available as a foodstuff outside Japan, before they could even think of getting a room.

These days Japanese hotel owners will let foreigners stay at their hotels regardless of how well they understand Japanese language, etiquette, culture or history simply in return for paying the bill. How things have changed and how I miss the old days.

[Ms. Smartarse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back in the 1970s, Alan Booth decided to go on an adventure. Though it may not have seemed as magical as Bilbo Baggins' quest, people's reaction to it was just as exasperating. After all, it's not every day, that you encounter someone traversing your country on foot: from its northernmost point (Cape Soya) all the way to its southern counterpart (Cape Sata).



I wasn't sure what to expect, which is why I have shelved this book under "travel guide". The Roads to Sata is much closer to a memoir however, which can be a good and a bad thing.

On the upside, it has plenty of partial area maps shown at the beginning of each chapter, so one can follow the locations mentioned. On the downside though, I often found it necessary to google pictures of the places being mentioned, in order to fully appreciate the descriptions provided. Yes... I like pretty things ok? Shoot me... just please wait till AFTER I visited Japan.

I don't normally do (auto)biographies: try as I might I can rarely avoid utter boredom. With this book, that wasn't a problem... for the most part. Those haikus annoyed me to no end, even if they were admittedly funny in places. But I don't do poetry, and I definitely don't do maudlin. In the end, skipping the poems saved the book from losing that 1/2 star, as far as I'm concerned.

It was really interesting seeing various people's reaction when they found out about the author's reason for his trip. Having them constantly offer rides to Booth along the way, was also really sweet. It made me wonder how many would do that in my own country? Heck, I even found the rude children cute in their own way... and I totally promised myself not to get mad if/when they'll tease me similarly.



Two distinct episodes remain in my memory:

1)The author's rather unpleasant experience at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, being accused of having contributed to the atom bomb's massacre. It made me contemplate my own hypothetical reaction to such a situation. I still haven't reached a satisfactory conclusion.

2)A young man's disbelief that a foreigner could speak Japanese:

"Niigata... toi(it's a long way). Go with car."
"It's really very kind of you, " I said, again in Japanese, "but I can't accept, and anyway, you seem to be going in the other direction. What I want is..."
He went on miming. "Niigata... toi... toi... toi..."
His girlfriend wound down the rear window and said, "Ne..."
"What?"
"He seems to be speaking Japanese."
"Baka na! (Don't be silly!)"
And the pantomime continued.

Score: 4.7/5

Let me tell you, if a trip to Japan was just a possibility BEFORE, now it's a definite thing.

These final quotes however, make for a better conclusion:

"Do you like the Japanese?"
"Which Japanese?"

"Do you feel at home in Japan?"
"No, I think it would be a peculiarly thick-skinned foreigner who was able to do that."

"Do you think you've learned much during the last four months?"
"Yes, I think I've learned a bit about Japan and a lot about myself."

[Jessaka · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful an elegant read

Englishman Allen Booth, who was fluent in japanese, decided to walk across the entire length of
Japan. His reason was lost on me, but I'm so glad that

he did.

This was most enjoyable in this audio form because I was able to listen to the British accent of the narrator. Also, he is very good withw Japanese accents.

The beginning chapters of this book were
fantastic. He Wrote about his interesting conversations with the Japanese , which intern, endeared me to them. For example 1 elderly woman walked up to him, put her hands around his neck, pulled him toward her,and then kissed him on the cheek. She asked him where he was from and he said Tokyo. She thought that was good and then walked away.

Early on in the book, He was sleeping on the beach and his sleeping bag when it began to rain. Oh my! He walked in so much rain it was amazing. In this instant, he went to sleep on the caretakers front porch. A light came on the porch, then the front door locked, and next he saw the man's staring at him from the window. But he slept through the night
People kept offering him a ride, but he refused, which led to their wondering about him. Why would anyone wish to walk? Well, I could understand it, but I
never Would have done it.

He continued to have adventures along the way. Once he Took over the bar for a woman who went to get him fish for dinner. At another time children bugged him or some of the adults We're not as kind as in the beginning. He became a curmudgeon. Later on he found a book titled, how japanese think. Reflecting on it he said, I don't care what they think. Well, of course he did. It was funny, especially in view of his living in Tokyo by choice.

Then he stopped by
Peace Park and Hiroshima, walked into the museum and saw many photos and souvenirs of the bombing.. This was so sobering. And this is when I put the book down for the evening, so I could get some sleep.
But then I thought of how, in the 50s, when I was a child, we used to say, Bombs over Tokyo and then make the sound of bombs dropping.

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, thanks to GR friend Kiekiat for his review of this book, which inspired me to find and read it myself.

I love books about walking since I enjoy long-distance walking myself. Walking is the original human rate of speed: we can't see our surroundings anywhere near as well when we are zipping along in a car or a train. The only way to truly discover any place is on foot. Although I must admit, walking from one end of a country to the other is not something the average person would want to do.

But Alan Booth did, and here he shares many of the things he saw on his journey. The book was interesting, yet I found myself able to put it down and not pick it up again for a day or two. I am not sure why, though. Granted, Booth was a bit of a Grumpy Gus, and I got annoyed with him at times, but the book was filled with fascinating bits of history about the places he passed through, and enough pleasant interactions between the author and the people he met to make up for those times when I thought he was being incredibly rude.

I think part of what kept me from immersing myself in the book was Booth's attitude towards the people of Japan. I could never really make up my mind if he liked them, merely tolerated them, or hated them with a passion. He had been living in the country for seven years but still got annoyed when people didn't think he could speak Japanese or use chopsticks. And the children drove him crazy. I think he truly did hate the children.

I lived in Mexico for eight years, so I am used to people staring, little boys behaving like little boys the world over, and people wondering if I could or would eat the food or speak the language. But I never got as annoyed about any of that as Booth did. He seemed to have a major chip on his shoulder about the whole topic, and nearly every encounter that could have become something pleasant if he had allowed it to develop that way left a bitter taste in his mouth and in the reader's.

But maybe he was just following the advice one shop owner gave him when he learned that Booth was a writer:
"A country is like a sheet of paper; it's got two sides.On one side there's a lot of fancy lettering ~~ that's the side that gets flaunted about in public. But there's always a reverse side to a piece of paper ~~ a side that might have ugly doodlings on it, or bits of graffiti, or goodness knows what. If you're going to write about a country, make good and sure you write about both sides."

If you are going to describe both sides of a country, I suppose you should also be honest and describe both sides of your own self, right? So that may be why we get the Grumpy Booth as well as the Booth who went drinking with the baseball team or the sumo wrestlers. At east he LIVED while he was there. That is more than a run-of-the-mill tourist does.

I remember one old man who came up to me when my husband and I were walking around the city of Huamantla in the state of Tlaxcala, Mexico. The town was about an hour from where we lived and I loved the place, it was magic. Especially with memories like the ones this old man gave us. He saw me, his face lit up, and came rushing up and said "Wisconsin! Wisconsin!" I grinned and said "Arizona! Arizona!" We both laughed and then he told us how when he was a younger man he had gone north and worked in Wisconsin. Those few moments made us all smile and we parted friends. Making connections with other people is what real travel is all about it, right? At least it should be, anyway.

I may not have been over the moon about Booth but I did order another book he wrote about Japan, called Looking for the Lost: Journeys Through a Vanishing Japan. It arrived the other day, so after my feet get rested up from this journey, I will see what else Booth saw in a country I myself would love to visit.

[Patrick Sherriff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan Booth's Roads to Sata has been an ever present through my life in Japan. Published in 1985, 12 years before I first set foot in Japan, the book was always there, waiting for me to be ready to read it. I ignored recommendations by ex-colleagues at the Daily Yomiuri and more recently couldn't find the time to read it even after a friend working at the Japan Times thrust a copy into my hands with the command: "you gotta read this".

But I didn't. The prospect of reading another gaijin-does-Japan book left me listless. It was only after I liberated a first edition copy from a bargain bin in Kanda-Jimbocho last month that I finally, if a little reluctantly, pulled back the covers to see what lay beneath.

Sure, on one level it is another gaijin-does-Japan book, if those gaijin include Donald Keene, Alex Kerr, Ian Burma and Lafcadio Hearn. It's the quality of his observations and the self-effacing way that Booth writes them that makes The Roads to Sata so good. Nowhere does Booth commit the error of saying "the Japanese do this" or "the Japanese do that". Instead he employs the skills of a (good) novelist to show through his experiences a picture of Japan that while far from complete (this isn't the Japan of the big cities or big screens or big business) it is encompassing. Through focussing on the individuals he meets, chats to and tries to understand, the wood becomes discernible from the trees.

Some have criticised the book for a perceived negativity or cynicism on Booth's part, but I beg to differ. If Booth gets frustrated after four months of being harangued by high schoolboys taunting him to perform dancing-monkey-like, who can blame him? But Booth was merely being honest in his portrayal of his experiences, most of which were positive. He writes lovingly of the ordinary folk who went out of their way to be hospitable, and critically of those who did not, though all the while leaving it up to the reader to make the final judgement, leaving the door ajar, as all good writers do, for interpretation.

If you have an interest in good writing about Japan, you gotta read this.

Download my starter library for free here - http://eepurl.com/bFkt0X - and receive my monthly
newsletter with book recommendations galore for the Japanophile, crime-fiction-lover in all of us.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my least favorite parts of popular writing about Japan is how the same tired tropes keep coming up over and over again. It's either how Japan is a paradise of harmony with nature and ancient traditions in the modern age, with plenty of references to wabi sabi and mono no aware and geisha and kami and sakura, or how Japan is crazy and weird, with references to dakimakura and soushoku danshi and Kanamara Matsuri and hostess bars and low birthrates. It is to The Roads to Sata's eternal credit that Booth avoids both of these extremes. The best summary of his attitude is found in a conversation with a reporter at the very end of the road:

"Do you like the Japanese?"
"Which Japanese?"
"The Japanese?"
"Which Japanese?"

That's the attitude to have when writing about a country. People are people, after all, no matter where they are.

Most of the book is in the stories of the people that he meets. Booth devotes some space to the geography, but even there it's primarily in relation to the people who live there and the incidents that happen, like wandering in the hills of southwestern Honshu for hours because he repeatedly gets bad directions.

The Roads to Sata is the story of children chasing after Booth and calling him names, or people buying him drinks in bars, or old fishermen singing songs about herring on the shores of Hokkaido, or an old man who tries to draw him a map but forgets the characters for ryokan (旅館), or another who tells him that a country is like a paper with a formal print-out on one side and some doodles on the other side, and that he must not forget to write about both sides.

It's about the small-town police officer who's deathly afraid that he'll be bewitched by kitsune on the mountain roads, or the workman in Hiroshima who blames him for the bombing, or the person who complains about all the English on television that's creeping into the Japanese language, or the driver who refuses to believe that Booth is speaking Japanese even when his girlfriend points it out, or being turned away at a ryokan that was full only to call them less than an hour later and be immediately offered a room. It's about the festivals in small towns, and the sky lit up by Obon fires, and the tiny towns in the mountains that are slowly dying as their children move away to Tokyo and Osaka and Kyoto.

Like life, it's about a lot of small things, that all must be taken individually even as they add up to form a whole.

The attitudes displayed toward Booth seemed a bit extreme to me in many places, but when I looked up the dates, it turns out that the titular trip took place in 1977, before the JET Programme officially began and therefore before widespread exposure to native English speakers. It's entirely reasonable in many of those rural villages that the children who chased after him yelling, "Gaijin! Gaijin! Gaijin!" had never seen a non-Japanese person before. Add that in to the apparently-natural tendency of children to be horrifically cruel to anyone they perceive as different, and it all makes sense. It also explains why people would occasionally give him distances in ri rather than kilometers.

The writing is fantastic, suffused with a kind of dry wit yet never devolving into either mockery or cynicism. You can feel the frustration seeping through at times, but I'm pretty sure that I'd be annoyed if I had just been turned down at multiple ryokans that I was sure were only doing it because I wasn't Japanese. I never had it that bad, though I did recognize some similarities to my own experiences in Booth's accounts, both the good and the bad. That's definitely part of why I liked it so much, but I think the quality stands out even for people who know very little about Japan.

If you like travel writing at all, this is an excellent read.

[Myridian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Booth quickly became a tiresome traveling companion. He seemed annoyed through much of the trip and I started to feel like the main point of this book was to complain. About how he was a spectacle to children, businessmen, and Japanese people in general. (Let's ignore the fact that he was the one who chose to take a walking tour from one end of Japan to the other, thereby making himself stand out even more.) About the weather. About the traffic. About the trash on the side of the road. I also counted at least five instances in which he mentions road kill. I'm sure this lends a sense of realism and authenticity to the narrative, but was there really nothing more important to have as a trope running through the story?

More importantly, I never felt like I understood the journey or the reasons for it. What kind of midlife or personal crisis had sent Booth walking for 2000 miles? He consumed huge amounts of beer, didn't see his wife for months and only once or twice tried to pick up other women. It seemed inexplicable. Additionally, although he spent more time interacting with people than he could have from a car, there was no sense of getting to the heart of any of the individuals he met. Rather it always felt like there was an air of superficiality about even the most authentic of his interactions.

Booth was at his best describing the historical context of some of the locations and rhapsodizing about the scenery and I wish he had stuck to this. I do feel I have a slightly larger understanding of Japan, but not by much.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man, it is hard to say just how much I like this book. Alan Booth, seven years into his life in Japan decides to walk the length of the archipelago. In the process he seems to empty himself out completely, opening himself up to the sights and smells (and beer) of rural Japan. There is not a shred of interpretation or theorizing about "What is Japan?" in the whole book, which just leaves you with a long series of vignettes and many, many bottles of beer. The book is funny without jokes, sad without tragedy, and beautiful without being romantic. It is one of the most lovely and most self contained pieces of writing I've ever come across.

[Ms.pegasus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Alan Booth had been living in Japan for seven years and spoke fluent Japanese by the time he embarked on the unique project of walking from Cape Soya, the northernmost point of Hokkaido, to Cape Sata, the southernmost point of Kyushu. The time is the late '70's. He started out in June. By the end of his journey it was November. He chose a route along the western coast crossed by dusty paths, the occasional highway, and hilly terrain dotted with rural villages so secluded that residents often were unable to give directions to the next village. The result is an account so fresh and candid that the author feels present in the flesh. His account is a mosaic of contrasting and idiosyncratic Japanese views of their own exceptionalism — local, regional, and national.

Booth's book is more memoir than travelogue. Here is his description of an area surrounding Osorezan (“Terrible Mountain”), location of a shrine on the northern peninsula of Honshu: “The ground is the same dead white as the dust, stained yellow in patches from sulfur springs that bubble up through rifts and cracks in the lava. A stream crawls through banks of lime-green clay that seems both putrid and unripe.” (p.58-59) It's a far cry from anything you will read on TripAdvisor or “Lonely Planet.”

Booth's observations are the ruminations of the lone itinerant. Days of stifling heat and humidity interrupted by frequent and sudden pelting rain are balanced by spirits (primarily beer) to fortify his body and poetry to fortify his spirit. Nearly two months into his journey he enters the gorge of the Mogami River in Yamagata Prefecture. The river is the subject of a famous poem by the 17th century haiku master Bashō. He cautions: “The trouble is that when you start trying to translate haiku into English their surface simplicity can cause them to resemble the captions in somebody's snapshot album.

Swelled by early summer rain,
Swiftly flows Mogami River.”
(p.97)

Even the western coast, however, was being encroached by rampant development. He passes through Naoetsu, shrouded in unbreathable air, rimmed by trash, and washed by an unswimmable sea. “At one point the sea looked inviting enough for me to scramble down into a squalid little spit of sand and pick my way over the beer bottles for a swim. When I came out of the water my legs were black with oil.” (p.134)

Booth is constantly reminded that he is a foreigner, despite his command of the language and customs. Gaijin people pointedly remark to each other. School boys mock him. Innkeepers turn him away. Villagers gawk. When he explains his walking project, they can only react with disbelief. And yet, he also encounters kindness, hospitality, and well-meaning curiosity.

Booth concludes with a conversation he had with an old man in Hokkaido. This was in the early days of his walk. After cautioning that Japan cannot be understood from life in the cities, nor from talking to people, the old man states bluntly: “'You can't understand Japan.'” (p.281) That bit of wisdom is as true today as it was in the early '80's when this book was published

NOTES:
Multiple translations of the Basho haiku about the Mogami River. https://www.basho4humanity.com/topic-...

Booth was also a film critic and his articles have been anthologized: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/...

An anthology of Booth's writings was recently published: https://metropolisjapan.com/alan-boot...

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ever since a friend of mine moved to Tokyo a couple of months ago, I've rediscovered an interest in Japan that's apparently survived both my sedentary life of the last few years and the existence of anime, and which prompted me to pick up Alan Booth's account of walking the length of the country from Cape Soya on the island of Hokkaido in the north (from which you could put a coin in a telescope and try to see across the water to what was then the Soviet Union) to Cape Sata on the island of Kyushu in the south- a book I've had lying around for a while. It's also been a while since I've read a travel book, and even longer since I've read one in this particular sub-genre of people walking long distances for pleasure/edification/obscure personal reasons- the last one in my records probably being Bill Bryson's book about hiking the Appalachian Trail, which was passed around a lot during my Americorps year in 2010. There were quite a few outdoor adventurers among us (though also quite a few people who were so allergic to the idea that you wondered why they'd even signed up in the first place), and I remember a lot of talk that year of future plans to hike the AT as Bryson had (even if he cheated a little, if my memory of that book serves), including from me.

The age-range for AC was 18-24, and being 24 that year I'd just made the cut; my roommate was the same age, and I remember him commenting that hiking the AT was the kind of thing he'd consider doing at least until he was 30 but not afterwards, which didn't make much sense to me at the time. I somehow wasn't able to wrap my mind around the concept of aging back then, woefully naive about how fleeting the opportunities (time, money, health, spirit, your parents getting older) were for real adventure in life, and I was always perplexed by people who seemed to have their futures mapped out so meticulously. But my roommate was right; I'm 39 now, Booth was 30 when he set out on this journey in the summer of '77 (June 28th, to be exact; he didn't reach Sata until early November), and his itinerary here at times made me suspect that I've missed the window to do something similar. Walking sometimes over 30 km a day, looking for a ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn, as I came to understand, often connected to some small restaurant or bar- I think that's a picture of one on the cover) every evening, getting up the next morning and doing it all over again? I think I could manage that for a little while. But over the course of months? The prospect made me feel old- which I guess is why it's fortunate that Booth's general rectitude and reserve (he was a British guy living in the 70s, after all) often made him seem 9 years older than me rather than younger, and why I found it somewhat gratifying when about halfway through the book he began to ask himself if he was "mad" for doing this- he was seriously questioning his sanity, I think, he wasn't trying to be self-aggrandizing or funny- and began to note how tempted he was to just get on a train and return to civilization, as I'm sure I would've been.

What I remember of Bryson's book actually makes for a good contrast with Booth's, however, because Bryson with his loud personality and avuncular humor not far removed from Dave Barry's seems in my memory like the pop-American version of this kind of account; while Booth, though not without a dry sense of humor, isn't very interested in presenting himself as a character at all, and seems to keep a lot of his personality in reserve. At around that aforementioned halfway point, in fact, it occurred to me just how little I'd learned about Booth as a person. I'd think that a modern traveler, assuming they wouldn't just live-stream the whole trip and bypass the antiquated tradition of writing, would nevertheless spend a lot of time explaining why they'd gone to Japan in the first place, what they hoped to accomplish by the journey, working their doubtlessly weird and highly idiosyncratic motivations into something bright, platitudinous and reassuring for public consumption, as I think we're all tempted and rewarded for doing these days. Booth leaves it mostly unsaid, suggesting that you either understand implicitly why someone would want to walk the length of Japan or you don't, and it was kind of refreshing to read the account of someone without a pithy twitter bio, and about whom I couldn't tell much except that he was 30, British, straight, had been living in Japan (most recently Tokyo) for seven years, knew Japanese, liked beer and sake, and didn't smoke. It was refreshing even if at times I wouldn't have minded if he'd run into a garrulous American like Bill Bryson for a chapter or two, just for color and contrast; but the overall effect is to put the focus where it belongs, on the people and the landscape of Japan (mostly rural Japan, that is, as Booth avoids the cities just about every chance he gets).

And that's essentially what this book is about- the people, the landscape, the weather, the sea of Japan, temples, shrines, legends, insects, festivals, sleepy little towns, roads, valleys, highways, ryokans, bars, noodle shops. Booth's itinerary takes him through what he tells us is sometimes derisively called "the back of Japan", walking down the opposite side of Honshu from Tokyo, and accordingly I often felt like I was seeing a side of Japan that, even if I were to take a trip there, I probably wouldn't have the ingenuity to locate. It reminded me of both the good and bad of traveling- how easy it can be to strike-up conversation, how everyday interaction becomes fascinating and often hilarious; but also how you sometimes need to unexpectedly traverse long distances, improvise, adapt to the unfamiliar, how you attract attention even if you don't want to (Booth seemed to have schoolchildren following him in awe/fascination/amusement in just about every small town he passed through). It's a little boring for stretches, as any long journey is likely to be. One GR friend commented here that the book sounded really cozy, and I think that's true in a few different senses. For one thing, it's a record of a prolonged solitude that we'd be even harder-pressed to access today. Booth seems to have just had a tape recorder, a notebook, and the people and places he met along the way- I don't believe he even had headphones or music. It's a prolonged solitude that also reflects, I think, a certain degree of indifference to society, politics and the world at large, or at least an implicit assumption that the world will be just fine if one doesn't pay attention and react to daily events for four months, which I would say that for a lot of us has become almost unthinkable, or at least a sign of civic irresponsibility. And who knows, maybe it is. But it still felt good to detox from all of that for a while, even if only vicariously.

It's hard to summarize and draw conclusions from a book in which the author mostly resists summarizing and drawing conclusions, and that is itself a notable feature of the book, I suppose: that Booth's writing is like a series of snapshots whose meaning he mostly leaves to the reader. At one point, he tells an old Japanese legend that dramatizes the conflict between "duty vs humanity" which is said to weigh heavily on the people there. But that's not an overarching theme of the book, it's not something Booth sets out to demonstrate through his interactions with people, and I found myself wondering if such preoccupations have filtered down to the younger generations at all. Not too many years ago, I asked a Russian teenager I was tutoring what he and his friends thought about Lenin and Stalin. He said they often used their faces in memes, but didn't have much of an opinion one way or the other. It's a little different I suppose, since Lenin and Stalin were people- but then again, they also represent ideas. So does the profound dilemma of duty vs humanity weigh more heavily on Japanese kids today than it does on young people of other countries, or has it too gotten caught in the filter of the new century? The world and even human nature sometimes seem to be changing so quickly, I sometimes wonder how many ostensibly eternal questions will survive the next few decades.

Over time, though, as the book took shape, I did notice a few recurring observations and trains of thought on Booth's part: one that I initially found very curious was the apparent conviction on the part of many Japanese people that their country is very small, a notion that Booth is unable to disabuse them of. He says very little in this book about the war explicitly, but its memory seems to live under the surface of such exchanges, and the timeless quality that infuses a lot of the narrative makes it so that when history does intrude on it, as in a conversation with an old woman near Hiroshima, it feels all the more powerful:

"I saw people jumping into the river in their working clothes to try and cool their peeling bodies. There were schoolgirls in their uniforms with their arms and half their faces burned away. I went to Tokyo shortly afterwards and saw people carrying armfuls of potatoes through the streets as though they were precious jewels..."
She looked at me across the table. "Do you believe it?"
"Yes, I believe it."
"Young people today don't know what to believe. Their fathers sit in bars and sing the old soldiers' songs again. Nostalgia, they call it. I call it something else."

The chapter on Hiroshima arrives late in the book- necessarily so given the reality of geography, and yet it also seemed narratively appropriate, bringing together in my mind a few things that I'm not sure Booth even intended. But it's a chapter in which it first of all stops being funny that he keeps getting mistaken for an American, and in which recollections of the bomb and the black rain that followed start to rhyme with Booth's recurring observations about the destruction of the environment that seems to accompany American-led "modernity", and which, by my understanding, stands in contrast to Shintoism's traditional reverence for nature (as Booth puts it, "it is not in the shrines and temples that the gods live, but in the mountains themselves"). A romantic and nostalgic streak is probably somewhat implicit in a journey like Booth's, and at times early on I felt only politely indulgent of his complaints about the pollution from factories and the dirtiness of the air and the cacophony of advertisements in the cities and so on- it's not that I like those things myself, but so much of what bothers Booth about the modern world of the 70s is now a little difficult to not just take for granted at times. But it eventually seemed to me that the last couple of chapters in the book mirrored the melancholy that Booth tells a friend he thinks he'll feel when the trip is over ("Tired, relieved, boastful, empty"), and part of that melancholy I think had to do with glimpsing the future, with his awareness that he was witnessing a vanishing world; a feeling that perhaps we can all relate to in the time of climate change.

Booth occasionally comes across as a somewhat prickly and irritable guy; but then again, maybe I'd also have been irritable if I'd been hiking 30 km a day, and more often than not, he is- wisely, I think- pretty circumspect in his evaluations overall. Sometimes humorously so, as when he talks to a journalist at the end of the book:

"Did you ever feel like giving up?"
"Once, early on, when I thought I might not be up to it, and once in Hiroshima when I began to wonder what the point was."
"Can you say now what the point was?"
"No."
..."Why did you decide to do it in the first place?"
"Because I'd lived in Japan for a quarter of my life and still didn't know whether I was wasting my time. I hoped that by taking four months off to do nothing but scrutinize the country I might come to grips with the business of living here, and get a clearer picture, for better or worse."
"Have you managed to do that?"
"No."
"Do you like the Japanese?"
"Which Japanese?"
"The Japanese."
"Which Japanese?"

And in keeping with that circumspection, I don't know that I would draw too many strong conclusions from this book about the inhabitants of Japan, except that there are clearly some pretty friendly people there- like everyone who stopped to offer Booth a ride (even if the reactions ranged from incredulous to annoyed when he invariably refused), the clerks who would give him coffee for the road, the ryokan owners who would sit and talk with him late into the night; and also some pretty lonely people, like an older woman he meets whose only companion is a bird; as well as a few jerks here and there. And in fairness to Booth, these might be the only things you ever really learn about people in a foreign country (or even your own). When I came back from Russia, for example, some people here in the U.S. naturally enough wanted to know what Russians were like, and I never knew what to say. I still don't, except that some of them are pretty friendly, some of them are pretty lonely, and some of them...

[Quo · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is said that...a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. In The Roads to Sata: a 2000 Mile Walk Through Japan, Alan Booth commences his pilgrimage by being asked by the proprietor of his minshuku (local inn), Are you catching a bus? To this he responds, No, I'm going to walk. He is then asked if he is walking far & answers: The length of Japan.


Having left England for Japan years before, married a Japanese woman & having become fluent in the Japanese language, Booth nonetheless is treated as an oddity, a gaijin (foreigner) throughout his 3,300 kilometer trek, though its purpose is to surmise just why he has remained in Japan and what it means to be Japanese, a rather homogeneous culture.

Booth endures almost constant privations throughout the long solo journey that begins in Cape Soya at the northern tip of the island of Hokkaido, including monsoon rain, other forms of inclement weather, blisters & swollen legs, seemingly salved only by great quantities of beer, occasionally shifting to an equally large liquid diet of Saki.


Consistently, when Booth speaks Japanese, those he encounters respond in a variation of English. The assumption is that Booth is American but when he advises that he is British, he is asked if they speak English there and answers: some of them. Everywhere there seems a dread of all foreigners, with a small boy asking his mother: What is a gaijin doing here? Booth remarks that particularly in small towns, he is taunted and treated like a circus freak.

Throughout his ambulatory ordeal, Booth attempts to detail Japanese cultural aspects, including Shinto rituals, which he suggests are closer to national identity than religious faith; his interactions at a vast array of traditional ryokans (local inns with included multi-course kaiseki dinners); beating a taiko (large drum) at a community festival; and the contemplative tranquility at old Zen temples.


On one occasion Booth is injured while participating with Sumo wrestlers and comments that "Japanese sumo wrestlers out-celebrate baseball players by about the same margin as they outweigh them and their celebrations of defeat are more raucous than those of victory".

Ultimately, Booth seems reconciled to the inconsistencies of his long & arduous pilgrimage in Japan:

The people spoke with different accents but the same proportion were gracious & kind and the same proportion treated me like a freak. Japan had had so little contact with foreigners (in modern times only 5 generations) and it was their native inquisitiveness & not their rudeness that had got the better of them. Walk the length of Japan: what for? To hear a nation with a 2,000 year history complain of growing pains?

As the author walks 3,300 kilometers, readers are treated to his reflections on intersections with people on the 3 major Japanese islands--Hokkaido, Honshu & Kyushu, as he merges Japanese culture, geography, history, the atomic devastation at Hiroshima & the haiku verses of Basho.


Still not quite sure of the validity of his 128 days wayfaring from Cape Soya to Sata, Alan Booth comments that he has perhaps learned more about himself than about Japan. He is informed by an elderly man near journey's end that one can't understand Japan by walking through it nor by talking to Japaneses folks along the way.

Surprised by this confrontation, Booth asks: Then how do you suggest that I try to understand Japan? The old man responds, You can't understand Japan.

*Within my review are images of: author Alan Booth with knapsack; the northern island of Hokkaido; a traditional Japanese ryokan (inn); scene at an ancient Zen temple.

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is going straight to the top of my list of favorite travel narratives. What a story! What amazing people he met! And what a writer Booth is!

In the early eighties, Booth decides to travel from the tip of Japan in the north to the tip of Japan in the south. On foot. Along the way, he meets perplexing Japanese person after perplexing Japanese person. Here’s a sample:

‘I recognized the turnoff to the lodging house...by a brightly lit electric sign glowing an effusive welcome...The doors of the lodging house were curtained and locked and it took five minutes of rattling them to rouse the white-shirted custodian, who bustled out finally to tell me that they were closed.
“But you’ve got a sign all lit up down on the highway.”
“Yes. We always keep it lit.”
“What for, for goodness’ sake?”
“To make people feel welcome.”
“But you’re closed.”
“That’s right.”

If you like travel narratives, you will love this one. Side note: I wish you luck trying to find a copy. I’ve had this on my wish list for at least five years and I only found a copy this summer.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is marred by an abundance of dull day to day commentary. You could write a TLDR like this: "I walked down an filthy road. Some children laughed at my back, until I growled at them to go away. I stopped at a shop for beer. I asked about a ryokan and the wife informed me it was full, whilst muttering about 'gaijin' under her breath." This, and the occasional gross commentary about young women, are what brought the book to three stars for me.

The book shines when the author is actually engaging with locals, or discussing some Japanese history or custom. There are some really nice moments there, and the prose can be snappy; but not enough to improve the dreary feeling the author invokes. Overall, the book was pleasant enough to continue reading, but I would not be likely to recommend it to anyone.

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the account of an Englishman’s somewhat unromantic walk from the most northerly tip of Japan to its southernmost extremity, a 2000 mile journey along the Western coastline, punctuated by a myriad of incidents, encounters and anecdotes. Seven years of life in Tokyo had equipped Alan Booth with fluent Japanese, an ability to eat raw fish and a confident mastery of the sandals worn in Japanese toilets, but at no point in his journey was he ever other than a “gaijin” - a foreigner - to the people he met. The book is a hypnotic read, despite the utter absence of any plot or story, a patient passage through one location after another, for which most merit only a few pithy lines and none more than a few pages. There are descriptive passages, there are brief historical interludes, there are occasional serious conversations that shed light on aspects of Japanese life. Often, though, a single sentence or brief snatch of conversation is sufficient to convey the essence of each experience and these moments of insight (epiphanies) can be a joy to read. He does not romanticise the Japanese - their lives often seem very restricted and narrow - but he describes them in affectionate terms. When they annoy him, though, he retaliates by immortalising their silliness in this lovely book and that is a tradition which many other writers have observed and of which I greatly approve.

Some quotes

Naoetsu is described in the official guidebook as “one of the flourishing industrial centers on the Japanese Sea Coast.” It is so flourishing that from a distance of four kilometers you can’t see it. As you get closer, the mechanics of its disguise become apparent. The chimneys of the Nippon Stainless factory and the Mitsubishi petrochemical complexes pump a solid stream of choking brown smoke into the Sunday afternoon sky. The dock is full of cranes and filthy little tramp steamers and a continuous trickle of dust filters down from the snow roofs that ward off nature from the pavements. Naoetsu has the distinction of being the only city in Japan whose beer shops I raced by without a second glance. I had a vision of petrochemical yeast dissolving most of my vital organs which were then replaced by a stainless steel liver and an injection-molded Mitsubishi stomach...I fled Naoetsu in top gear and didn’t look back at it till forty minutes later by which time it had disappeared. [p134]

...while the temple gardens are meant strictly for contemplation, you can stroll along the pathways of Kenrokuen as you would through an English park. A European might not consider Kenrokuen old. It was laid out in 1822 and in Europe there are parks and gardens that predate it by centuries. But here in Japan, where fires and earthquakes so frequently ravish the cities, and where, consequently, many of the most famous landmarks have had to be rebuilt in modern times, anything that has stood for a hundred years can claim to be venerably “old”.
You can experience a little of Kenrokuen’s peace by looking at the photographs in the guidebook…. I went to see Kenrokuen on a fine Monday afternoon. Children screamed, young men shouted, businessman drank and staggered about, cameras clicked, babies cried, thousands of people followed dozens of guides along the paths between the unruffled ponds and the long-suffering trees. Each guide carried a flag in one hand, so that her charges would not lose themselves in the crush, and a portable loudspeaker in the other hand, through which she furnished the explanations so essential to the appreciation of natural beauty. The older tourists listened to the guides and stayed so close to their heels that they seemed to be on leashes. The younger tourists listened to the transistor radios they carried slung across their shoulders:
I want you baby
I want you ba-a-by
[pp148,9]

Near the top of one hill I came to a cleft that several generations had used as a rubbish dump. There was a little wooden shrine above the stinking heap of cans and cartons and again I couldn’t help pitying the deities for the slums they are lodged in. “There are thirty thousand gods in Japan,” a friend once boasted to me. “Yes” I had retorted, in a bloody mood, “and about three of them paid any respect.” [202]

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

An introspective travelogue, focused more on the inner than outer journey -- my favorite kind of travelogue, in fact.

Booth walked from the northernmost to the southernmost points in Japan, a trek of some 2,000 miles. Although he spoke fluent Japanese, he found that the perceptions (especially in rural areas) of his "foreignness" created almost an invisible barrier. Still, there were times when he transcended cultural perceptions and had amazing encounters.

Rather episodic by nature, Booth's observations and insights never pall. There's humor, here, too, particularly as many of the Japanese assumed he spoke no Japanese, and so were rather unbuttoned in their remarks made in his presence. One especially ripe scene takes place in a ryokan. The owner insists that he can't accommodate Booth because he (Booth) doesn't speak Japanese.... but, of course, the conversation is taking place in Japanese. Priceless!

One aspect of the book that really resonated for me was the inclusion of numerous fragments of haiku. Masters of the form such as Issa and Basho, of course, were great travelers. Booth's keen appreciation for that tradition brought depth to his account.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was recommended by Will Ferguson, as an inspiration for his trip in "Hokkaido Highway Blues". But it is much worse than Ferguson's story.

By walking instead of hitchhiking, Booth ends up having many fewer interactions with Japanese people. Ferguson has extended conversations with people who pick him up. Booth's interactions are more adversarial, as in 'No, leave me alone, I don't need a ride.'

Unlike Ferguson, Booth has little sense of humor. Booth goes to major tourist sites, which, having been to them all myself, I found less interesting.

Unfortunately, the major theme of the story is how Booth can never be accepted by the Japanese (even though he lives in Tokyo and has a Japanese wife), and can never truly understand Japan. Ferguson brings these issues up, but they aren't central to his story.

Many, or even most, of his interactions seem to have been negative. Most of the most detailed portraits he gives are negative ones: children who treat him like a circus freak, innkeepers who lie to him because they don't want to host a Westerner. This isn't great reading.

Despite all these negatives, I still liked the book! It just pales in comparison to Ferguson's book.

> The people spoke with different accents, but the same proportion were gracious and kind and the same proportion treated me like a freak, explaining, if they got the chance, that Japan had had so little contact with foreigners (in modern times for only five generations) and that it was their native inquisitiveness, and not rudeness, that had got the better of them. Walk the length of Japan: what for? To hear a nation with a two-thousand-year history complain of growing pains?

> The men of Iwate state flatly that their sake is better because their rice is better. The men of Akita counter that their sake is better because their water is better. I have studiously avoided taking sides in this dispute because I have found that, by maintaining a noncommittal silence, I have cup after cup of free sake urged upon me in an effort to elicit the judgment I shall never give

> "I know everything about England," crowed one particularly cocky little horror who had elbowed and shoved the polite girl out of the way. "Oh yes? Well, what's the capital?" "Don't know, but I can speak English conversation." "Go on, then." "Yes no yes no yes no yes no." And I had to put up with several minutes of this chant before the kids eventually grew tired of me and went off to strangle cats or something. … I turned round finally and told them it was rude to treat people like circus freaks, but the tallest of them simply repeated my words in the same nonsensical nasal voice while the others fell about laughing

> Worse than this and the ear-wrenching noise was the fact that halfway through the tunnel I ran out of oxygen. It was the filthiest place I could remember being in. The circle of rusty daylight at the end of it looked like the bottom of a stopped-up lavatory bowl, and the closer I got to the air again the more unbreathable it appeared. I emerged finally, choking, spitting, one side of my body covered with soot and slime from the tunnel wall, my mouth as dry as a dung brick, and found I had to sit for nearly a quarter of an hour on the grass verge by the highway to recover my breath, by which time it had begun to rain.

> "You're full?" She nodded, her thumb still in her mouth. We stood and looked at each other with pained expressions on our faces. "Well, in that case I wonder if you'd let me have some matches?" The woman fished into her apron pocket and gave me a box of the ryokan's matches. I walked down the village street to a little yellow public telephone and dialed the number on the matchbox. It wasn't even necessary to disguise my voice. "Hello, do you have any rooms free?" "Yes, how many of you are there? We're..."

> "Be careful." "What of?" Officer Uehara was silent for a long moment, and I was spooning up the last of the curry rice when he said, softly but quite distinctly: "Foxes." "What?" "Be careful of the foxes. Their spirits can bewitch you." I looked up expecting to see a broad grin, but there was not the least trace of humor in his face.

> when I had put on my kimono again and come back into the living room, I found to my astonishment that the couple had phoned my wife, whom I had not seen for more than three months, and who was waiting eight hundred kilometers away in Tokyo to wish me a happy anniversary. … I offered to pay for the meals and the room, and Mrs. Takahashi flew into a mock rage and threatened to box my ears for such a suggestion. We said goodbye on the main street of tiny Nakasu, bowing to each other while neighbors gaped. Mrs. Takahashi plucked a small pink handkerchief from her sleeve, dabbed her eyes with it, and stuffed it into her bag, and I left her village the sadder for a kindness that I could not repay because I was not meant to.

> "I'm not a funny foreigner," I said. "I'm an ordinary foreigner." There was a short silence, and the master coughed. "Er... what... er... would you like to drink?" "He heard me!" laughed the customer. "Yes," I said, "you have quite a loud voice." The traditional pantomime followed, in which the customer went through the motions of an elaborate and completely insincere apology, ending with an offer to buy me some beer

[Blythe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have finalllllly finished this book. I think I started it in early 2016, and I finished in summer 2017; that is not to say it's a bad book. I usually put those down. But it is slightly repetitive ("I walked into this small town, a Japanese person made a xenophobic comment, then something lovely happened.")

Overall, I highly recommend this book to a very *specific* audience, or, rather, two specific audiences: people who like tales about people walking far distances, and people who are interested in a very intimate glimpse of Japanese life outside of Tokyo.

I have always been fascinated with stories about people walking. One of the original books that got me interested was a book about someone's journey along the Appalachian trail (there wasn't Goodreads back when I read it, so I don't remember the title or author, sorry!) A more recent memoir that I loved was Without a Map. And The Roads to Sata is an excellent addition to this genre.

Only, sometimes it plods along as slowly as such a trip might. But that adds to the realism!

I picked this up somewhat randomly from the free book bin at the library and it was worth every penny. Kidding, of course - I spent way more in time investment than money on this book, and wholly without regret.

Alan Booth was a British journalist whose mother (I think) was Japanese, and though he looked like a Westerner, he spoke Japanese fluently. This makes for some amazing moments where the Japanese people he meets, who constantly assume he doesn't know the language (sometimes despite him speaking to them), react in humorous ways to his knowledge of their language and culture.

He is an excellent describer of people and places he travels through, and as I have wanted to travel to Japan for many years, this was a lovely introduction to the country.

The bittersweetness of this story is that Booth passed away not long after its publication, so there's not really any other books by him. He left behind a Japanese wife and young daughter. His writing marks him as a man of intelligence, good humor, and integrity, and when I googled him about halfway through reading the book, the news of his death some 40 years ago was unexpectedly saddening. "Unexpectedly" is probably the wrong word - what I'm saying is, I started to feel like I knew the man or was in conversation with him, at least. His book gives an intimate picture of him as he is mostly alone. And so the news of his death was unlooked for, and the sadness completed some connection I had made to a long-gone soul.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Can we find a little joy in Japan? Ferguson did. Granted, Booth was writing in the 1980s, not far removed in the grand scheme of things, from defeat at the hand of evil empire (oh, wait, that's the Middle Eastern view) and cultural upheaval, and granted also that a journalist must call them like they see them, but really, you almost get the feeling that the hiking trip from top to bottom of the islands was foisted on him by his publishers and he wasn't having it. It is basically a litany of bewildered locals, rude children, scared (or anti-gaijin) businesspeople, polluted cities, rubbish-strewn locales, narrow minded, racist. . .well, you get the idea. Who, after reading this short travelogue would even entertain the notion of visiting this country? Which is sad. Was he venting his spleen after seven years living there? You would think he was accustomed by then to some of the attitudes he would be meeting. And for all those people who lauded this book. . .Booth doesn't even write that well. I don't get it. Ok, it isn't a terrible book, and there are interesting insights, but for a selection so often referred to as witty? No, I think readers would be better served with HITCHING RIDES WITH BUDDHA.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was just thinking about this book again recently, and looking back I see I never wrote a review. There was so much that I loved about this account of a walk from one tip of Japan to the other. The author set out walking and reported what he saw, the good and the bad. Mostly he was walking through rural areas that you never hear about in other accounts of Japan or in travel guides. There was no spiritual journey or journey of self-discovery where the reader has to slog through painful accounts of divorce, drug addiction, any of the usual torture that is the popular travel memoir. There was no attempt to leave out the less interesting parts of the trip. Fans of the long and mundane in literature and film will enjoy the style of this writer. Best of all the author is just really funny. It was particularly funny that he noted every time (which was a lot of times) he had beer at the inns he stayed at along the way.

[Josie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book in the hopes of becoming enthusiastic about an unwilling move to Japan. I was hoping to learn about the culture and some out of the way sights. Unfortunately, this book was about a man walking along roads, with no particular interest in sights. Entirely readable and thoroughly depressing. I learned: that the Japanese litter, there are an awful lot of snakes in Japan. Also an awful lot of racism. If you don't like fish, you'll probably be eating random and weird things. This author did fine with all of that because he drank like a fish the whole time. Needless to say, I will not be picking up the author's second book on Japan, because I'd like to have a small amount of enthusiasm left.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful, but his bitterness overshadows the story.

[Amelia Cripps · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book A LOT. I felt like it was a bit of a marathon to get through but I appreciated how that got me in the spirit of the 2000 mile walk.

I learnt a lot about Japanese culture that I didn’t know before. I liked how this guy had already lived there for 10 years so wasn���t annoying about it.

Loses half a star for the is-he-or-isn’t-he misogynistic thoughts I had. Lol.

[Rúben Fernandes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much more than a travel book. 100% recommend.
(The humour is *****)

[Sarah Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the better travel books I’ve read - the highlight was all the encounters with different sorts of people. It also seemed a bit like time travel as it took place almost 40 years ago.

[Gail Pool · Rating 4 out of 5]

To travel on foot is a lure for many people, whether they are pilgrims following in the footsteps of those who preceded them, or adventurers setting out on their own paths. As Patrick Leigh Fermor observed in his classic, A Time of Gifts, “on foot, unlike other forms of travel, it is impossible to be out of touch.”

Alan Booth clearly felt the attraction of this kind of journey. An Englishman who had lived in Japan for 7 years, was married to a Japanese woman, and spoke fluent Japanese, he set out in the eighties, at the age of 30, to walk from the northernmost cape of the northernmost island of Japan, Cape Soya, to the southernmost cape of the southernmost island, Cape Sata—the entire length of Japan.

In The Roads to Sata, he gives us a kind of journal of this journey, which took 128 days and covered some 3,300 kilometers. He walked on back roads and, if necessary, on highways, he stayed in country inns, he consumed quantities of beer (“foot gasoline,” as he calls it), and he had encounters with, he estimates, some 1200 people: from businessmen to housewives, from priests to cyclists, and from farmers to sumo wrestlers—with whom he actually wrestled. (Spoiler alert: he didn’t win!)

Along the way, he meets an elderly man, who tells him: “A country is like a sheet of paper; it’s got two sides. On one side there’s a lot of fancy lettering—that’s the side that gets flaunted about in public. But there’s always a reverse side to a piece of paper—a side that might have ugly doodlings on it, or bits of graffiti, or goodness knows what. If you’re going to write about a country, make good and sure you write about both sides.”

Booth clearly takes this to heart. He describes the landscape, myths, and history of the regions he passes through, especially in the north. He writes interestingly about some of the fascinating rituals, such as O-Bon, the Festival of the Dead, which is for many people, he says, “the most important time of the year.” He praises the hot springs so wonderfully resuscitating to his sore legs, and the kindness and nicely quirky aspects of many of the people he meets.

But he also describes the heaps of refuse lying on the beaches, the violent pornographic comics, the cruelty to animals, and, above all, the unfriendliness and even hostility toward foreigners that he encounters. People mock him, assuming he doesn’t understand what they’re saying; little boys (but not girls) taunt him; everyone stares, making him feel like a “freak.” Many inns turn him away, claiming at times that he can’t stay because he doesn’t understand Japanese (even while he’s speaking to them in Japanese) or because he can’t eat the raw fish they serve (even though he explains that he’s lived in Japan for 7 years and assures them that he eats raw fish).

Booth recreates these encounters vividly, and they’re believable. I felt I could understand his frustration. But I began to find his depictions frustrating as well. Westerners have often had trouble with the very different culture of Japan, and I wished that while the author was getting in touch with the country, he would have been more openly in touch with himself. Why, after all, was he on this journey? He says very little about this at the start. It is only at the end of his trip, when a reporter asks him this question, that he replies: “Because I’d lived in Japan for a quarter of my life and still didn’t know whether I was wasting my time. I thought that by taking four months off to do nothing but scrutinize the country I might come to grips with the business of living here, and get a clearer picture, for better or worse.”

This statement seems to me both odd and oddly placed. Why would he be “wasting his time” living in Japan? What does he mean by this? In view of the book, I could only think he had been wondering for a long time whether he would always be viewed as an outsider in Japanese society, and that he’d been possibly “wasting his time” thinking he might be accepted. It isn’t clear. But whatever he means, the statement suggests that Booth started out with an attitude that shaped his experience, and it would have altered the reader’s experience to have known from the start what that attitude was.

The Roads to Sata is an engaging account, but it would have been a far stronger book if the author had explored his own cultural viewpoint and made it more explicit at the start. Without this reflection, and introspection, an important layer is missing, a layer of insight necessary to interpret the story he’s telling. A cross-cultural memoir—like a sheet of paper—always has two sides.

[Khonie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book describes his walk from Cape Soya in Hokkaido to Cape Sata in Kagoshima. I really wanted to read about his conversations and interactions with the locals but those were few and brief as he was on the road every day.

[Patrick McCoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

There have been many books written about Japan by foreigners and I think I managed to come across most of the best writers early on during my stay in Japan, Donald Richie and Ian Buruma immediately come to mind. For some reason I put off reading Alan Booth's seminal The Roads To Sata (1985). I think I heard some negative comments about it, but a good friend whose taste I respect said it was his favorite book on Japan, which makes sense because he is a long distance walker and lover of traditional Japaneses culture not unlike Booth himself. Booth decides to walk from Cape Soya in the distant northern peninsula to Cape Sata in the southern isle of Kyushu in 1977. It is an extraordinary feat and gives a portrait of what rural Japan was like in the pre-Bubble era. I think the strengths of his book lie in stray observations of all the distinct individuals that cross his path, descriptions of rural areas that few people-let alone foreigners-pass through, and the sly humor that often lies in between the lines, perhaps in typical English style. Many of these encounters take place in bars and over beers and result in raucous nights and comically remembered conversations and interactions. Here is an example:

...a guest says to a ryokan person (guest house worker)..."I am just going out for a short stroll" is always understood as expect me back incapable of speech at about midnight," and is automatically told what time the door locked and shown the back way in.

I plan to eventually visit every prefecture in Japan, so I was particularly interested in those areas I have yet to visit. So the Hokkaido section and Tohoku sections were particularly interesting for me, since I have only been to the capital city of Sapporo and Akita city in Akita. He has great admiration for the northern region as it is where he first lived when he arrived in Japan (in the northern most prefecture Aomori) and finds the sparsely populated countryside peaceful. I was also interested in his journey through the Chubu region-in particular Sado Island, the isle of exile, in Niigata and Kanazawa, one of the few cities spared from bombing in WWII, in Ishikawa-two places with long histories that are on my short list for traveling in Japan this year. In the south I know little of Fukui and Yamaguchi as well. And once he crosses into Kyushu, a place I have visited several times, but not through the swath through the middle that he went, which crossed through Kumamoto and Oita-the next two places I plan to visit. I think Booth's book is less personal and less judgmental than Donald Richie's great travel book, The Inland Sea, a book I can't help but compare this to. I find it lacking in that sense, but I think these books would be a great starting point and companion pieces in learning about Japan. I think both books provide a glimpse into a forgotten Japan that no longer exists. To Booth's credit, I think he is reluctant to make any general observations about "the Japanese" and it is clear that he tires quickly of the attention and attitudes people had of foreigners in the 70s, he merely wants to be accepted as an individual person rather than an exotic gaijin (foreigner), and as a result he connects with those who look past his foreignness and accept him as a person. He has little faith that he will ever truly understand Japan, even though it is probably what he thought he would accomplish in his herculean task. He admits as much in the final pages. But then again, no foreigner can. And I think this is the appeal of living in such a place as Japan and something that both Richie and I would probably concur with.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘The Roads to Sata’ is a beautiful book about an incredible journey. In 1977 Alan Booth walked the entire length of Japan from the northern tip of Hokkaido to Cape Sata in southern Kyushu.

There are two things about this book that I find fascinating. In 1985 when this book was published the shelves of bookshops were awash with books about the ‘Japanese Economic Miracle’ and studies of the Japanese ‘character’ that drove the ‘miracle’. Although better qualified than most to comment on this, having lived in Japan for 15 years with deep appreciation of the culture and literature of the country, Booth refrains from making generalisations about ‘the Japanese’. ‘The Roads to Sata’ describes his encounters with individuals he meets on his long journey through Japan, many of whom are helpful and friendly, a few are friendly and unhelpful and some are downright rude. The only persistent motif in these encounters is the frequency with which Booth is treated like a gaijin ‘freak’ and while Booth does not always approach this with good humour he generally does so with patience. If you visit Japan today you are occasionally singled out by individuals (usually schoolchildren) for attention, so imagine how hard it would have been for a westerner to pass unnoticed and unremarked in rural Japan 45 years ago.

The second thing I find compelling is that, from the perspective of a reader in 2022, the lack of self-awareness of the author is extraordinary. Although Booth clearly intended to write a book about the journey (if he had any plans to make a quick buck they were frustrated as it took several years for the book to be published), any alternative impetus for the walk is never discussed. There is no prologue about wanting to discover the ‘real’ Japan or discussion of the incredible amount of research and planning that such a journey would have required. Nor is there an epilogue reflecting on what he learned about Japan or himself. The first page of the book literally starts at Cape Soya and the last page ends at Cape Sata. And with British understatement, the author barely acknowledges the remarkable singularity of his achievement. ALAN BOOTH WALKED THE ENTIRE LENGTH OF JAPAN! Apart from some initial blisters he does not dwell on physical discomfort, and although there must have been periods of great loneliness and indeed fear as he walked through road tunnels with only a torch for protection Booth’s account is free of any psychological reflection. I cannot imagine an author in the 21st Century writing a personal narrative that is so unselfconscious.

While the journey was epic the story itself is not. The book is short because despite the length of the walk not much happens and Booth is averse to wringing phoney-drama from everyday events. Other than Hiroshima, Booth stays no longer than one night in each of the places he visits, and because the travels everywhere on foot his range is limited, so it is hardly your typical travelogue. However, it is a story of a journey into the rural heart of Japan from a time that seems very long ago written by an extraordinary individual. We are so lucky to have this document.