A Tokyo Romance

August 1, 2018

"Japan shaped me when the plaster was still wet," writes New York Review of Books editor Buruma. In his mid-20s in 1975, the Dutch-born Buruma, who is half English and half German Jew, arrived in Tokyo to study film at Nihon University College of Art. Being Midnight Cowboy director John Schlesinger's nephew provided Buruma with his initial entrée to the film world. Beyond academia, his participatory education took him onto sets and stages as he explored multiple artistic expressions--film, theater, dance, photography--in raw, uninhibited manifestations. That Buruma is both author and narrator here--reading in a languid British English combined with Japanese fluency--proves he's his own ideal presenter. His encounters range from inevitable--meeting famed expat Donald Richie who "introduced Japanese cinema to the West"; to outrageous--sporting a "tiny scarlet jockstrap" onstage, then dropping his dance partner; to sublime--appearing in a whiskey ad with Akira Kurosawa. VERDICT Readers expecting cherry blossoms and tea ceremonies will be shocked; deep satisfaction awaits audiences prepared for an unflinching, explicit memoir of a stranger-in-a-strange-land's cultural and sexual maturation. ["Buruma's meditations on his place as a foreigner in Japanese society achieve some depth, but the descriptions of the various personalities and the lurid slices of 1970s Tokyo's underground scene are this memoir's strongest feature": LJ 2/15/18 review of the Penguin Pr. hc.]--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Dutch writer/editor (THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS) Ian Buruma was stumbling around Japan long before sushi went onto international dinner plates. In arch tones, Buruma narrates his own audiobook, describing his coming-of-age in Japan in the 1970s. We close our eyes and listen deeply in order to reconcile the fact that the cultured voice drawing us into his past once belonged to an unsophisticated boy. Buruma explains in an ironic tone the rise of "being into Asian" as a global phenomenon. For those who are fans of Buruma's work as a chronicler of major events in Asia, this will be a personal encounter with his sexual and cultural awakening. For those unfamiliar, his performance here may lead to investigating more of his writing. M.R. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine