I remember I enjoyed the book even if it was a bit artificious. ( )

Originally written in Japanese, this passionate, vividly personal book draws on the author's experiences in Japan over thirity years. Alex Kerr takes us on a backstage tour, as he explores the ritualised world of Kabuki, retraces his initiation into Tokyo's boardrooms during the heady Bubble Years, tells how he stumbled on a hidden valley that became his home...and exposes the environmental and cultural destruction that is the other face of contemporary Japan.

Winner of Japan's 1994 Shincho Gakugei Literature Prize.

'This deeply personal witness to Japan's willgul loss of its traditional culture s at the same time an immensely valuable evaluation of just what that culture was'-Donald Richie of the Japan Times

'Alex Kerr's book carries a powerful message applicable to all cultures. He is on a life-long quest for beauty'-Issey Miyake

Contents

Preface
Chapter 1 Looking for a caslte
Chapter 2 Iya Valley
Chapter 3 Kabuki
Chapter 4 Art collecting
Chapter 5 China versus Japan
Chapter 6 Calligraphy
Chapter 7 Tenmangu
Chapter 8 Trammell Crow
Chapter 9 Kyoto
Chapter 10 The road to Nara
Chapter 11 Outer Nara
Chapter 12 Osaka
Chapter 13 The Literati
Chapter 14 Last glimpse
Glossary

'Lost Japan' talks about the author's life in Japan and his pursuit of his aesthetic ideal, which he found to some extent in Japan's ancient arts: tea ceremony, kabuki theatre and calligraphy. But the book is entitled 'lost' because the author perceives the decline of these traditional art forms and their practitioners. There is a melancholy for their departure and a lament about what is replacing them -- a modern, soulless, bureacratised, synthetic existence. This modern Japanese life is what the author excoriates in his later diatribe, 'Dogs and Demons', which I read first, but 'Lost Japan' is a more balanced work. It was helped too by it's updated foreword, which hinted that the author had achieved a measure of equilibrium after his bitterness of the early 2000s. ( )

A mediados de la década de los sesenta, Alex Kerr llegó por vez primera a Japón de la mano de su padre, un oficial de la armada norteamericana. En su retina quedó fijada la imagen de un país bello que, sobre todo en sus zonas rurales, transmitía una sensación de magia e irrealidad, como si un pedazo de historia se hubiera congelado en el apogeo de su hechizo. En sus visitas posteriores, la obsesión de Kerr por Japón fue aumentando, y desde 1977 reside en el país, donde ha desarrollado un trabajo concienzudo de recuperación y conservación del viejo Japón, para contribuir a que la ola de la modernidad no erosione lo que queda de la tradición. Así, Kerr ha trabajado en programas para la restauración de casas rurales, ha fomentado el cultivo de artes como la caligrafía o el teatro kabuki y, en definitiva, se ha implicado en mantener vivo un Japón que se difumina.

Japón perdido, libro galardonado con el premio Shincho Gakugei al mejor ensayo de no-ficción en 1994, fue escrito originalmente en 1993 en japonés y el propio Kerr lo ha revisado en inglés en 2015: una mezcla entre memoria personal, ensayo sobre la cultura japonesa y guía de viajes. Una lectura encantadora para descubrir –ya sea en la distancia, o como lectura sobre el terreno– ese Japón que no suele aparecer en el mapa: un Japón antiguo, hipnótico y, por momentos, incluso fantasmal.

This short book is a great way to get into key aspects of traditional Japanese art and culture based on both the author’s scholarship and personal experience. It covers the cultural mores of Kyoto society, the structure of traditional Japanese houses, calligraphy, the significance of kabuki, the Chinese influence on Zen Buddhism, life in the city of Osaka, and much more. Although the author is American, he also has a great nostalgia for old Japan and frequently bewails modern Japanese tendencies that are destroying both the past and the remaining traditions as well as the beauty of nature. This does not prevent him from relating humorous anecdotes. Several interesting individuals make appearances including: David Kidd, the expert in Chinese art; Trammell Crow, the real estate developer; and Ann Fleming, the spouse of Ian Fleming (when the author was at Oxford), as well as prominent Japanese practitioners of the artistic and cultural traditions with whom the author has established friendships. ( )