A review by rezate
Lost Japan by Alex Kerr

3.0

I can get behind Kerr's yearning for the pre-industrial natural landscape, and I do appreciate how he widened my vocabulary with regards to traditional Japanese arts. This was the perfect book to find in a hostel in Kyoto and read while traveling around the Kansai area. But some features of this book I found really grating: the uncritical nostalgia for the good old days (what even is that, the 1970s? the Heian period?), the unnecessary name dropping (the Andy Warhol episode was particularly excruciating, but there were at least twenty more), the glaringly immense amounts of unexamined privilege (there is always someone offering a job, always a friend to financially support a business idea or step in with expertise, academic scholarships are acquired out of nowhere, collecting art costs "mere" thousands of dollars... Call me bitter, but who lives in a world that works like this?). The last chapter most definitely exists only so the reader can think to herself, oh, Kerr says he can't find another literati circle after leaving Oxford, but clearly, by his own definition, he is one of them--he's probably just too humble to realize this! It's funny to criticize Japan for glorifying itself, and then go right ahead and glorify your own vision of Japan instead.

...I'll still bookmark all the places mentioned in this book on Google Maps, though. Thanks, Mr Kerr!