This book arrived safe and sound in my letterbox this morning. It is only a slight book, so I managed to finish it off pretty quickly.

I have to say that the more I read, the less I liked Peter Carey. He is clearly not much of a people person—his interactions with others are uniformly awkward and I was rather appalled by the way he treated his son’s friend, Takashi. He seemed more intent on rushing around, trying to achieve some purpose that wasn’t even clear to himself. He came across as being distinctly snobbish.

The book reminded me a bit of Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel. That too is about a foreigner in Japan struggling to come to terms with the culture through some particular aspect. I felt that Herrigel did it with far more grace, though to be fair Herrigel was actually living in Japan at the time rather than just there for a quick visit. Herrigal didn’t demand answers in the way that Carey did or seek to extract the essence of a culture by interrogating its forms.

The non-answer to Carey’s interview questions by those in the anime and manga industry reminded me a lot of Zen and Buddhism—the teacher isn’t there to give you the answers, you must arrive at your own.

Despite my dislike of Carey, it was quite a fascinating book. I loved that he highlighted the generational gap in Japan as well as between himself and his son. That in turn resonated with the culture gap.

Hearing about the bombing of Japan was quite eye-opening and made me realise that there is indeed a focus on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, when the devestation was really more widespread. There were other facts scattered throughout that made me stop and think as well (13 year-old samurai being one). Miyazaki came across to me as being as much a breath of fresh air as I’m sure he did to Carey. And being quite an anime fan, I appreciated the references.

All in all, an interesting book, but not one I particularly enjoyed.

I didn’t really “get” this book. It seemed to be like a hodge-podge collection of the author’s experiences in Japan with his teenage son, an anime fan. Yeah, he meets cool people, and there are some interesting anecdotes, but they seem cobbled from other sources (quotes from other books and summaries of movies). When Carey is sometimes embarrassingly wrong about Japan (he keeps trotting out all his pet theories and they’re systematically demolished by his Japanese companions) it seemed to me like his reaction was just, “Dang, I was wrong about Japan!” He didn’t really offer any real insights.

Disappointing book. Cruising the Anime City (I’ve also reviewed that one) was a much better insight into Japan’s pop culture.

I read this in preparation for a trip to Japan, and appreciated learning about his humorous encounters before arriving. I can’t say that Tokyo has presented me with as many mistakes and misconceptions as it did Carey, but perhaps he helped me to push aside some of my own preconceptions before arriving.

For anyone who has ever spent time in Tokyo or is interested in doing so, it’s definitely a fun and enjoyable read.

Carey is a bit ageist, seeming to think that anything not directly influenced by traditional Japanese culture and/or the devastations of WWII are not ‘the Real Japan’. This is mildly annoying.

His pretension is more interesting, more or less being the point of the book. He learns first hand that he can’t grok a culture from the outside, no matter how much of it’s output (manga/anime) he consumes. It comes as a relief that by the end he has stopped trying. This strengthens my resolve to live in the places that fascinate me, Japan being only one of them.

Has rekindled my manga viewing!