Donald Richie

50 Years of Writing on Japan

The Donald Richie Reader

Gavin

The greatest gaijin? Famous for introducing Japan's cinema to the West, but actually fewer than half of his thoughts are anything to do with that. Richie has an eC20th directness about describing other peoples - think Martha Gellhorn or Kipling - their 'pure skin', their atrocity-enabling 'innocence', their circuitousness and tribalism. (It is now sometimes inappropriate, sometimes oppressive to emphasise differences so.) 
I cannot imagine Plato thriving here [Japan], with all his absolutes (“the truth,” “the beauty”)... Maybe that is why Japan is so backward (by comparison) in some areas: philosophy, diagnosis. And perhaps why it is so forward in others.

From the celebrated farting-contest scroll and the early illustrated He Gassen (The Fart Battle), up to such recent representations as the delightful farting games in Ozu Yazujiro's Ohayo, Japan's culture is filled with vivid examples... Farting is certainly included in the nature of man:

"And what is it you all
Are laughing at, may I ask?"
The retired master's fart.

Four or five people
Inconvenienced
By the horse farting
The long ferry ride.

Just here, I think, is the difference in attitude between Japan and the West. That a thing is is sufficient to warrant its notice, even celebration. The hypocrisy of the idealistic has not until recently infected Japan.  &nbsp:In both cultures the fart is funny but only in Japan is its humanity acknowledged. This entails a full acceptance of the human state. There is even a rubric for such matters, the ningen-kusai ("smelling of humanity") and within it the hé (屁) takes an honorable place.


What do I want to be when I grow up? An attractive role would be that of the bunjin. He is the Japanese scholar who wrote and painted in the Chinese style, a literatus, something of a poetaster - a pose popular in the 18th century. I, however, would be a later version, someone out of the end of the Meiji, who would pen elegant prose and work up flower arrangements from dried grasses and then encourage spiders to make webs and render it all natural. For him, art is a moral force and he cannot imagine life without it. He is also the kind of casual artist who, after a day's work is done, descends into his pleasure park and dallies.

Similar to Hitchens in its consistent, adventurous aestheticism, though with much quieter prose; however, neither has that certain Alastair Reid transcendence. Minus a half for seriously ugly layout and typography, but I will seek out his real books.

In one sentence: Ah, so innocent, so subtle, so far from Ohio.

The Donald Richie Reader 50 Years of Writing on Japan

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