A classic memoir of self-invention in a strange land: Ian Buruma's
unflinching account of his amazing journey into the heart of Tokyo's
underground culture as a young man in the 1970's
When Ian Buruma arrived in Tokyo in 1975, Japan was little more than an
idea in his mind, a fantasy of a distant land. A sensitive misfit in the
world of his upper middleclass youth, what he longed for wasn't so much
the exotic as the raw, unfiltered humanity he had experienced in
Japanese theater performances and films, witnessed in Amsterdam and
Paris. One particular theater troupe, directed by a poet of runaways,
outsiders, and eccentrics, was especially alluring, more than a little
frightening, and completely unforgettable. If Tokyo was anything like
his plays, Buruma knew that he had to join the circus as soon as
possible.
Tokyo was an astonishment. Buruma found a feverish and surreal
metropolis where nothing was understated--neon lights, crimson lanterns,
Japanese pop, advertising jingles, and cabarets. He encountered a city
in the midst of an economic boom where everything seemed new, aside from
the isolated temple or shrine that had survived the firestorms and
earthquakes that had levelled the city during the past century. History
remained in fragments: the shapes of wounded World War II veterans in
white kimonos, murky old bars that Mishima had cruised in, and the
narrow alleys where street girls had once flitted. Buruma's Tokyo,
though, was a city engaged in a radical transformation. And through his
adventures in the world of avant garde theater, his encounters with
carnival acts, fashion photographers, and moments on-set with Akira
Kurosawa, Buruma underwent a radical transformation of his own. For an
outsider, unattached to the cultural burdens placed on the Japanese,
this was a place to be truly free.
A Tokyo Romance is a portrait of a young artist and the fantastical
city that shaped him. With his signature acuity, Ian Buruma brilliantly
captures the historical tensions between east and west, the cultural
excitement of 1970s Tokyo, and the dilemma of the gaijin in Japanese
society, free, yet always on the outside. The result is a timeless story
about the desire to transgress boundaries: cultural, artistic, and
sexual.
