A Tokyo Romance

Book review:

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This autobiography takes place in pre-blog days of the 70s. A film student on scholarship in Japan ends up falling more into theatre and butoh and a considerable sprinkling of dalliances with the locals.

Ian Buruma is now a noted Dutch writer of works relating to Japan and also China. Long before this, he was a restless twenty-something departing Amsterdam for a film making scholarship with “Nichidai” (Nihon University College of Art) in Japan. His foray begins with a soft landing. He and his Japanese girlfriend lob into the luxurious, staffed, mansion of a relative who happens to be a corporate elite. The film school turns out to be underwhelming and Buruma is soon imbibing copious amounts of cinema in art houses and live theatre. He also has the double-edged cachet of being the nephew of John Schlesinger (director of the ground-breaking, Academy award film, Midnight Cowboy) which assists his introduction with both Japanese and expatriates alike.

There is a telling moment midway through the book when he is basically called out on his aimlessness. The deliverer of this harsh truth is Tatsumi Hijikata, the co-inventor of butoh, whom Buruma has only just met and is also slightly awestruck at. Events pick up from here and he eventually falls in with Jūrō Kara’s Situation Theatre troupe as they tour. He also acquires a small, on‑stage part. Buruma’s already informed appreciation of butoh is enhanced by this association and provides for an insider’s look at the off-stage lifestyle and group dynamics of the tour.

While butoh is the prominent topic in the later half of the memoir, the first half reflects Buruma’s eclectic early experiences and he is evidently not afraid to tell it in all its unflattering glory. He skips classes despite collecting scholarship. It was some two years before he was egged into producing his first film. It was a short, it was not good and it starred a girl he was keen on. Regarding “indiscretions”, there were plenty. His reason for breaking with his girlfriend amounts to wanting to explore what he is “missing out”. In spite of benefitting from foreign male celebrity he bemoans the typecasting such as locals assuming him to be from North America and repeatedly quizzing him on cities that he has never visited. For good measure, there’s some surreptitious comparison of prowess thrown in.

This candid write up proves insightful in other ways. Buruma’s time in Japan intersected with that of a number of expatriate literati and readers gain a window to this influential clique. Foremost amongst Buruma’s peers was the cinephile extraordinaire Donald Richie, who was already an esteemed authority on Japan and whose presence looms large throughout Buruma’s experiences. In today’s egalitarian climate it’s also perhaps easy to overlook a major contributing reason for this congregation in the first place. Compared to their home countries at the time, Japan was more tolerant of foreigners whose proclivities not exclusively heterosexual and equal opportunity opportunists.

Shelf: 935.7 BUR
A Tokyo romance : a memoir.
by Ian Buruma.
London : Atlantic Books, 2018.
243 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm. “Includes bibliographical references and index.
Text in English.
ISBN: 978-1-78239-799-1 (hardcover) ; 978-1-78239-800-4 (paperback)

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