Looking for the Lost: Journeys Through a Vanishing JapanKodansha International, 1995 - 387 páginas In his final work Alan Booth takes us on a fascinating journey by foot through three remote regions of Japan to search for the country's geographic and spiritual heart - and for the elusive connections between present and past, self and society. Looking for the Lost is a beautifully written, opinionated, and entertaining look at the life and slow death of a culture, and a poignant self-portrait of a writer also nearing death. Booth's journeys begin in the far north, in the homeland of modern Japan's most famous outcast, the decadent novelist Osamu Dazai. His often hilarious encounters in the towns along the lonely, underdeveloped coast where Dazai grew up reveal a region caught between change and tradition, where the effects of Japan's economic miracle are only now being felt. Booth then explores the tangled wilds of southern Kyushu - the battlegrounds where Saigo Takamori, one of Japan's most-loved tragic heroes, led his small rebel army in a futile last stand against overwhelming government forces in 1877. Finally he turns to the mountains and rivers in central Japan where the Heike clan, defeated by the Genji in the epochal twelfth-century civil war, were said to have dispersed. The bloody fall of the Heike marked the decline of refined court culture, an aristocratic golden age that Japan still clings to, however tenuously, in a time of love hotels, tourist traps, and industrial sprawl. |
Contenido
The Outer Shore | 3 |
The Rice Lake | 30 |
The Buddha Rock | 56 |
Derechos de autor | |
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Looking for the Lost: Journeys Through a Vanishing Japan Alan Booth Sin vista previa disponible - 1996 |
Looking for the Lost: Journeys Through a Vanishing Japan Alan Booth Sin vista previa disponible - 1996 |
Términos y frases comunes
appeared arrived asked beer began brought building called close dance dark Dazai door drink empty English explained eyes face fact fish five followed foreign four gave girl half hands head highway hills hour hundred Japan Japanese kilometers lived looked mean mind minutes morning mother mountains never night o'clock once owner passed past Perhaps played prefecture rain reached rest restaurant rice river road rock round ryokan Saigo sake seemed showed shrine side sitting song spent stand stayed stood stopped street There's things thought Tokyo told took town track trees Tsugaru turned village walked wall wanted watched wife window woman wooden young