The Inland Sea

Few Japan travel memoirs by non-Japanese writers reach this level. Donald Richie, best known for his books and essays on Japanese cinema and his work as a film critic for The Japan Times, first arrived in Japan in the late 1940s. After returning in the 1950s, he made it his home for the rest of his life, remaining there until his death in Tokyo in 2013 at the age of 88.

I recently read A View from the Chuo Line and Other Stories (2004) and The Image Factory (2003), both interesting but not nearly as substantial, romantic, or insightful as The Inland Sea, first published in 1971.

In this travelogue-slash-memoir, Richie sets out in search of what he calls the “real” Japanese. He imagines they existed long before modernity and hopes to find them still on the “backward” islands of the Setonaikai. As he moves from island to island, he encounters a range of locals whose ways of life were already changing in the rapid current of Japan’s modernization. His descriptions of people, landscapes, architecture, lodgings, and customs are rich, gently rendered, and often beautiful. There is humor as well as sadness, a mix of cultural encounters and a quiet lament for the passing of older ways and of time itself. He suggests that “only in appearances lies the true reality” and reflects on the “mask” of the Japanese, worn by each and all, a theme explored by Ian Buruma and others. Richie ultimately concludes, “I would never find them, the real Japanese, because they were always around me, and they were always real.” He also writes in his note to the first edition that “for the Westerner Japan is a great mirror. In it we can see the land and the people clearly—but we can also see ourselves.” This, he suggests, is what the book is truly about, making it not only a fascinating account of the Setonaikai but also a narrative of self-discovery.

The book also includes twenty black-and-white, somewhat abstract photographs by Yoichi Midorikawa, which deepen the already vivid imagery of Richie’s prose and enhance the overall atmosphere.