A Japanese Mirror: Heroes and Villains of Japanese Culture

A Japanese Mirror, published in 1984, is Ian Buruma’s dissection of the myths that imbue the darker segments of Japan’s culture. He doesn’t hold back; his cuts are sharp and deep. The “mirror” here can represent a number of things: a reflection of the nation’s history in its present; its heroes and villains reflected in society; or art reflecting life and vice versa. It also suggests the way society wants to see itself and, conversely, how it doesn’t want to see itself (the wandering hero, for example, like Tora-san, charming and beloved by audiences as an anachronism incompatible with modern-day Japan and its norms, and rejecting inclusion in this society anyway).

On the mirror concept, Buruma writes:

The morbid and sometimes grotesque taste that runs through Japanese culture—and has done for centuries—is a direct result of being made to conform to such a strict and limiting code of normality. The theatrical imagination, the world of the bizarre is a parallel, or rather the flip-side of reality, as fleeting and intangible as a reflection in the mirror.

Buruma covers so much in the book, from films and literature to historical figures, actors, archetypes, and social roles, that it is as illuminating a read as it is useful as a reference. It left a strong impression on me and influenced how I view certain aspects of the culture, and not all of those impressions were positive. Buruma has such a masterful command of the English language, and such a broad understanding of Japan, that it is often hard not to agree with him.

Although the book came out in the early 1980s, a lot of it still feels relevant to Japan today. That said, many of the more extreme cultural elements Buruma highlights have been tempered over the decades since the freewheeling days of the economic boom, and also as Japan has been further opened up by globalization.