Donald Ritchie's Japan Journals

We recently added this excellent book to our bookstore. HIGHLY recommended!

The Japan Journals, 1947-2004

Donald Richie

Any English-speaking Japanophile certainly knows the name Donald Ritchie. Well known for his translations and analyses of Japanese cinema, Ritchie opened the door for Japanese movies to the Western world. He was not only able to analyze the films, understanding both Eastern and Western sensibilities, but also befriended the filmmakers, and could often speak of the film's production from a first-person perspective. However, Ritchie didn’t write only about movies. He has written numerous essays and books on Japan and the Japanese people.

Now PDI is happy to present, in commemoration of over 50 years of writing on Japan, Donald Ritchie's latest offering, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004. This is a collection of writing which spans Ritchie’s entire life in Japan, and how shows both the man and the country changed, grew, and adapted over the last half century.

As numerous as memoirs are in popular literature today, none can compare to the close reality of a journal done in real time. We can be assured that not only are the accounts accurate in content, but also in the perspective of the writer at the time of the writing. Even in the briefest of entries Ritchie is able to describe not only what is going on around him, but his personal take on the situation, often with a humor that is never disrespectful. Here is a portion of the entry from September 26, 1955:

“In the morning Beppu looks less garish, but also less attractive. It looks, in the new light, like a town with a hangover…When I look out I see the steamer coming in from Osaka, right on time. It will dock precisely when it is supposed to.

“The boat is crowded with school children, all leaving Beppu…to exotic Kansai. Yes, I have been there, I say when asked. I saw Kyoto live. No, the golden Pavilion is not made of real gold (this in answer to a first-year student), but it looks like it. No, I do now know how much a geisha costs (this in answer to a high school junior)-his chances of acquiring one are, in any event, slight.”

The book is wonderfully edited by Leza Lowitz. Her biographical notes add to the big picture the journal entries create, and her organization is refreshing. For example, instead of putting the entries strictly in chronological order, she sometimes orders them by other criteria. Early in the book there is a section where, thanks to his film writing which had appeared in Western publications, he was tapped to host many famous Western visitors to Japan in the late 1950s. How timely it was reading the entry about Truman Capote.

Over 70 black and white pictures are scattered throughout the text. Many of the photographs capture Ritchie with the famous names he worked and socialized with, such Akira Kurosawa, but there are also pictures of the close friends he describes in the stories he tells. Ritchi’s talent as a photographer is apparant, and the pictures of writer Yukio Mishima are especially haunting.

Although Japan Journals is hardly in the voyeuristic vein of a tell-all, Donald Ritchie does not hold back the often intimate details of his affairs. Ritchie did not go to Japan with a mission to build ties between Japan and the Western world, but did so, somewhat in spite of himself. He is never an apologist for the Japanese way, or for the Ritchie way. Japan Journals is not only fascinating for it’s look at Japan through western eyes, but also in how Ritchie develops the ability to look at himself through the eyes of Japan.