Book Review: Lost Japan

This book, produced by the Lonely Planet Guide people, comes as quite a surprise as something that they would keep on their list, but it is a pleasant surprise. As a company that caters to people who wish to travel, you would think that they would tend to focus on books about nations that reflect overseas experiences in the most favorable light. This book, if the title is any indication, does not reflect so generously on Japan, its sites and sounds, its present-day culture, its preservation of traditions, its modern architecture, or its treatment of the environment.

But Alex Kerr is no hack with an axe to grind. He is not some foreigner who showed up in Japan not understanding a speck of Japanese, found the culture of Tokyo hard to live in, and then got out of the country after a couple of frustrating years. Alex Kerr is someone who fell deeply in love with Japan since he was a child. He is more fluent in Japanese than most Japanese people. He has a very rich educational background and aesthetic understanding of Japanese literature, art forms, crafts, and calligraphy, that surpasses most of the Japanese people living today. He is a man passionate about theater in Japan, and an expert in many artistic traditions of Japan. So, if such a man is critical of where things are going in Japan, and can articulate how the nation has changed so radically from when he was a young man living here, we have to concede that here is someone who really knows what he is talking about.

And he does. Great Scott, the wealth of information that comes through this text is awesome. Well researched, intelligent, full of common sense and a keen appreciation of humor, Kerr takes us along with him as we learn how he learned about Japan. After living in Japan for almost a decade at this point, I am ashamed to learn how much I do not know about Japan. But then again, according to Kerr, that just makes me very much like any other Japanese person living here today too.

Kerr does not just blindly attacks Japan, he mourns for the nation. He laments for the disappearance of Kyoto of the past, the dissolving forms of theater that he has treasured for years, and the fading away of art as it is so often simply torn out of homes, tossed in a trash heap, and replaced with a lifestyle packed with hard plastic, corrugated sheet metal, Styrofoam, Astroturf, and festooned with Hello Kitty and Power Rangers motifs.

A few months ago, I gave a two-hour presentation to a group of travelers from America. They were members of the Elder-host tour and we had a marvelous time together. My presentation for the day was supposed to be, “A History of Kanazawa and its Artistic Contributions to Japan”. I did that part of my lecture, but I also gave myself about half of the allotted time to give a short presentation which I privately entitled, “Living as an Ex-pat in Japan”. The presentation went well, and our Q and A session ran into a third and fourth hour. I gave them a reading list of books that I thought were good to learn more about Japan. One couple in the tour told me that Lost Japan was on the reading list they received from the Elder-host administration and that after reading it they were just about to cancel their reservations to come to Japan. They were still glad that they came to Japan, but they confessed that they felt ripped-off in that they should have come here 40 or 50 years ago to see more of the “real” Japan that many of us come here in search of.

I highly recommend this book, and anything else written by Mr. Kerr that you can get your hands on. A brilliant writer, and a craftsman of words and expression, this book is critical for anyone who wants to know more about Japan, and why it looks the way it does today.

Mark Groenewold
Kanazawa, Japan
January, 2005

Book Review: Lost Japan

Author: Alex Kerr

Reviewer: Mark Groenewold

Date: January, 2005