
Lost Japan (Paperback)
Alex Kerr (author)Published: 03/09/2015

A resident for over 30 years, Alex Kerr delivers an intensely personal tour through the cultural, social and political history of Japan. Lost Japan is both an encomium for the rites, traditions and ceremonies that are fast disappearing from Japanese life, and a warning about the relentless threat that globalisation represents to a unique world culture.
An enchanting and fascinating insight into Japanese landscape, culture, history and future. Originally written in Japanese, this passionate, vividly personal book draws on the author's experiences in Japan over thirty years.
Alex Kerr brings to life the ritualized world of Kabuki, retraces his initiation into Tokyo's boardrooms during the heady Bubble Years, and tells the story of the hidden valley that became his home. But the book is not just a love letter. Haunted throughout by nostalgia for the Japan of old, Kerr's book is part paean to that great country and culture, part epitaph in the face of contemporary Japan's environmental and cultural destruction.
Winner of Japan's Shincho Gakugei Literature Prize, and now with a new preface. Alex Kerr is an American writer, antiques collector and Japanologist. Lost Japan is his most famous work. He was the first foreigner to be awarded the Shincho Gakugei Literature Prize for the best work of non-fiction published in Japan.
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780141979748
Number of pages: 256
Weight: 200 g
Dimensions: 198 x 128 x 26 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'One of the finest books about Japan written in decades' - Insight Japan
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