The Donald Richie Reader: 50 Years of Writing on Japan

No one has written more, or more artfully, about Japan and Japanese culture than Donald Richie. Richie moved to Tokyo just after World War II. And he is still there, still writing. This book is the first compilation of the best of Richie's writings on Japan, with excerpts from his critical work on film (Richie helped introduce Japanese film to the West in the late 1950s) and his unpublished private journal, plus fiction, Zen musings, and masterful essays on culture, travel, people, and style. With a critical introduction and full bibliography. Donald Richie's many books include "The Films of Akira Kurosawa, The Japanese Tattoo," and the PBS favorite "The Inland Sea." Vienna resident Arturo Silva lived in Japan for 18 years.

Donald Richie was born in Lima, Ohio, in 1924 and has lived in Japan since 1947, except for time at Columbia University in the early 1950s and as curator of film at New York's Museum of Modern art in 1968-73. The author of some thirty books and dozens of essays, Richie is especially well known for his instrumental role in introducing Japanese film to the West and for his travel memoir The Inland Sea, which has been adapted into a popular PBS documentary. Donald Richie still lives and writes in Tokyo Arturo Silva is an American writer who lived in Japan for eighteen years. He currently resides in Vienna