Living Carelessly in Tokyo and Elsewhere

Japanologist, translator, documentary filmmaker John Nathan gives us a memoir packed with delightful stories from his years in Japan and, yes, elsewhere. There's an ebb and flow in these pages as Nathan reflects on his life's paths while either (humbly) patting himself on the back or kicking himself for perceived wrong turns.

He's a bold writer, and Living Carelessly is compelling for its acute honesty and Nathan's sharp insights and wryness. He's lived life on a large scale. But carelessly, he has us believe. In the 1960s, he translated Yukio Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea and Kenzaburo Oe's A Personal Matter and regularly hung out with these authors. He also made three documentary films in Japan in the 70s (Full Moon Lunch is currently on YouTube. I couldn't track down The Blind Swordsman or Farm Song). In the book, he recounts his failures in Hollywood later and, yes again, elsewhere.

There's a wry sense of humor that surfaces throughout his writing, whether he's lamenting about salaries and royalties for certain projects or describing the quirks and whims of renowned artists or sharing stories about his two families.

I liked his anecdotes and fun facts about Mishima and Oe.

"Mishima had no sense of rhythm; his dancing looked like death throes."

And his recollections of his youthful years out on the town.

"...[they] kept your highball glass full without waiting to be asked, a Japanese custom that made moderation impossible, like drinking from a magically replenishing glass."

There are also regrets and self-flagellation.

"Striving, and failing, to feel superior, I tumble into despair about myself, which blinds me to what I have achieved and prevents me from finding any pleasure in it."

But the mixture of humor and despairing with a balance between inward- and outward-looking reportage works well. A few parts bored me. For example, the thirty or so pages he goes on about his days making TV commercials for AT&T and other companies. Overall, though, it's an interesting read with lots of "appearances" by famous (mostly male) faces in Japan, and elsewhere, including Donald Richie, Donald Keene, Peter Coyote, Akira Kurosawa, John Updike, Shintaro the "crude, misogynist scoundrel" Katsu, Saul Bellow, Robert Duvall, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Michelangelo Antonioni, Shintaro Ishihara and New Kids on the Block!

Shelved between Ian Buruma's A Tokyo Romance (2018) and Robert Whiting's Tokyo Junkie (2021).

Cheers to Pat McCoy for recommending this.

Tokyo Junkie

Robert Whiting’s Tokyo Junkie covers the author’s ties to Japan’s megacity over a period of more than half a century, including his relationships and notable encounters with all sorts of people and his work on several popular books and articles about Japanese culture, sport, and politics since the 60s. Whiting doesn’t pull punches, and he gives us an honest sizing up of many Tokyo layers and key figures and events, from the construction boom leading up to the 1964 Summer Olympics to the doings of yakuza syndicates and behind-the-scenes workings of the Yomiuri Giants, to foreign ballplayers in Japan, press freedoms (or lack thereof), government screw-ups and shady deals, wrestling, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and plenty more, with his personal experiences and Tokyo itself taking turns at center stage.

When I heard Whiting was releasing a memoir, I was eager to read it (plus surprised he’d beaten me to the punch, as I’d recently finished writing the first draft of a novel I’d titled Tokyo Junkie.) When I moved here in the mid-90s, a “gaijin-house”-mate passed on to me what was then a selection of current required reading in English on various things Japanese, most of which had been written by “foreigners” who’d dug deep into topics across a spectrum of focus areas. Among these were Alex Kerr’s Lost Japan, Ian Buruma’s The Missionary and the Libertine and, of course, Robert Whiting’s You Gotta Have Wa. And they were instrumental in shaping my views and helped to make sense of a place and culture which from every direction confounded me to varying degrees. I still have (and prize) some of these books (I somehow lost the above Buruma, regrettably; if anyone has a first edition they’re willing to abandon, do let me know).

I also enjoyed Whiting’s Tokyo Underworld (1999). It’s arguably the most compelling book about the city’s seamier sides. Alongside Jake Adelstein’s Tokyo Vice (2009) perhaps. And some choice bits in Tokyo Junkie are Whiting’s recollections of Nicola Zappetti interviews and the author’s accounts of brushes with the yakuza. Occasionally (maybe unavoidably) repetitive but consistently absorbing and informative, it’s a book you can either barrel through or sip at, with its countless, roughly two- to three-page chapter sections. I’ve shelved Tokyo Junkie next to Ian Buruma’s memoir, A Tokyo Romance (2018), and I’d recommend it to anyone familiar with Whiting’s work and/or enchanted by (or addicted to) Tokyo.

Tokyo Vice

Journalist Jake Adelstein's Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan is a remarkable achievement on a number of fronts. Here you've got a guy who comes to Tokyo to study at Sophia University (in the early 90s), lands a job reporting in Japanese for the Yomiuri Shinbun, works round the clock to make connections and eke out information at police branches and on various strata of the underworld, and gets the stories out there in the face of media red tape and threats of reprisal to himself, family and friends.

Having lived in Tokyo for about as many years as Adelstein, I remember quite a few of the cases he covered. His book filled in plenty of blanks, and as disturbing as some of his experiences and possible lapses of judgement were, I have a lot of respect for what he's been able to accomplish. Surprised I haven't run into him over the years in one of Tokyo's seedier warrens, and I look forward to reading more of his work.