Looking for the Lost: Journeys Through a Vanishing Japan

by Alan Booth

Overview

A VIBRANT, MEDITATIVE WALK IN SEARCH OF THE SOUL OF JAPAN

Traveling by foot through mountains and villages, Alan Booth found a Japan far removed from the stereotypes familiar to Westerners. Whether retracing the footsteps of ancient warriors or detailing the encroachments of suburban sprawl, he unerringly finds the telling detail, the unexpected transformation, the everyday drama that brings this remote world to life on the page. Looking for the Lost is full of personalities, from friendly gangsters to mischievous children to the author himself, an expatriate who found in Japan both his true home and dogged exile. Wry, witty, sometimes angry, always eloquent, Booth is a uniquely perceptive guide. Looking for the Lost is a technicolor journey into the heart of a nation. Perhaps even more significant, it is the self-portrait of one man, Alan Booth, exquisitely painted in the twilight of his own life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781568366159
Publisher:	Kodansha USA
Publication date:	04/21/2021
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

ALAN BOOTH was born in London in 1946 and traveled to Japan in 1970 to study Noh theater. He stayed, working as a writer and film critic, until his death from cancer in 1993. His books include The Roads to Sata.

Editorial Reviews

Booth's The Roads to Sata (Weatherhill, 1986), which recounts his impressions and experiences during a 2000-mile walking tour of Japan, is considered a classic of its genre. In the present work, Booth, who died in 1992, offers a sequel. The book is divided into three parts, each involving a journey connected to a famous person or event in Japanese history. The first, entitled "Tsugaru," follows the path taken by the Japanese novelist, Osamu Dazai (1909-48), in a work by the same title; the second, "Saigo's Last March," follows the retreat of the tragic leader of the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion, Saigo Takamori, to his death in his home city of Kagoshima; and the third part, "Looking for the Lost," explores the setting of the 12th-century Japanese classic, The Tale of the Heike. All three episodes contain Booth's customary blend of rich historical and cultural background with fascinating and often humorous anecdotal experience. Recommended for all libraries with an interest in Japan and especially for those owning Booth's earlier work.-Scott Wright, Univ. of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn.

Library Journal

Likening Booth to fellow quirky British traveler-writer Bruce Chatwin is inevitable, but Booth was kinder and gentler--less of a curmudgeon, more down to earth, more of a collector of people. For this book, the last before he died of stomach cancer while still in his 40s, Booth set off to retrace three journeys through Japan originally made by literary and military figures. The resultant miserable, rain-sodden walks he made yielded him seldom-seen, tiny villages populated by Japan's lost generation of rural, elderly, unsophisticated folk. He delighted in them but realized, bittersweetly, that such people will soon be lost forever as the new Japan of laser discs and karaoke creeps into even their precincts. Always, Booth transmits his fascination with life's small moments and the country's small details and thereby makes of his book a truly engaging, fascinating look at the Japan that doesn't make headlines. Booth's love for and frustration with his adopted country and his traveling both come out, too, and seem particularly poignant because we know that these journeys were his last.

Mary Ellen Sullivan

The author recounts his fascinating journey by foot through three remote regions of Japan in search of the country's geographic and spiritual heart. Lacks an index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

"[Booth] achieved an extraordinary understanding of life as it is lived by ordinary Japanese....Frequently brilliant in his insights."-F.G. Notehelfer, The New York Times Book Review

"Alan Booth was not only the best travel writer on Japan, but one of the best travel writers in the English language. Looking for the Lost is a superb exercise in describing Japan from the point of view of an outsider with the knowledge of an insider."-Ian Buruma, author of The Wages of Guilt

"Booth had a horror of pretension....[He] never fails to produce the whimsical anecdotes that keep the whole account down-to-earth."-Elizabeth ward, Washington Post Book World

From the Publisher