A Lateral View: Essays on Culture and Style in Contemporary Japan

Donald Richie
Stone Bridge Press (2007)
ISBN 0962813745
Reviewed by Debra Gaynor for Reader Views (2/07)

This is an excellent collection of short essays that share Japan’s culture and bits of Donald Richie with the reader.  I’ve always enjoyed Japanese Gardens and immediately delved into the essays on that topic.  “You must truly observe.  Go to the garden and look at the rock, the tree.  Ah, nature, you say and turn – then stop.  You have just observed that rock and tree have been placed there, by the hand of man, the Japanese hand.  A new thought occurs:  Nature does not happen; it is wrought.  A new rule offers itself:  Nothing is natural until it has been so created.”  “The garden is not natural until everything in it has been shifted.  And flowers are not natural either until so arranged to be.  God, man, earth—these are the traditional strata in the flower arrangement, but it is man that is operative, acting as the medium through which earth and heaven meet.”

Richie thoroughly discusses hand gestures.  The meaning of a hand gesture in one country may not be the meaning of it in another country.  We all use gestures when we speak but we don’t necessarily interpret the gestures of another culture correctly.  A smile in Japan may not necessarily mean happiness. 

In Japan if you see a person wearing a shirt that says Cocoa Cola it means he loves that drink.  The person with a university shirt on wants to attend that university.  The person wearing Army Surplus is not making a statement.  In the US wearing these same items would be “expressing an ironic scorn for the qualities they presumably inculcated.  Wearing surplus U.S. army gear meant you were anti-Vietnam-War and hence anti Army.”

If you are interested in the cultural and arts in Japan you will find this book fascinating.  Some of the essays seem to have a little age on them.  Richie admits, “What was true up to 1962 is not necessarily true up to 1989.  Japan is fast changing, and some of the things one thought most Japanese are no longer apparent.” I believe this book speaks much of who Richie is.  Richie is the “acknowledged Western expert on Japan.”  I highly recommend “A Lateral View” to those interested in Japan and other cultures.

Make comment on weblog