GOLDSEA | ASIAN BOOKVIEW | NONFICTION
Public People, Private Peopleby Donald Richie
Kodansha International, New York, 1996, 324pp, $29.95
Engaging, often intimate portraits of some real-life famous and obscure Japanese
REVIEW: LIVING JAPANESE
onald Richie lived in Japan far too long--over 40 years at the time his book was published--to dissect the Japanese with the blade of abstraction. Public People, Private People comprises 54 intensely particular portraits of real Japanese. Some are famous, like Toshiro Mifune and Yukio Mishima. Others are unknown, like the delivery boy and the sushi shop apprentice. On each subject Richie lavishes astonishingly keen powers of observation and even more breathtaking candor. Each sketch is a finely-crafted work of art. As a whole, the book is the best living portrait of the Japanese we've read.
Tanaka is a significant figure in Japanese culture not just because of his achievements but because of his roots.
Prewar Japan was a nation governed by a well-bred, well-heeled elite, a country of haves and have-nots. The pressure and tensions resulting from his disparity were major causes, historians believe, of Japan's ruinous military crusade. "Postwar Japan", in contrast, was supposed to be different, a land of equality and opportunity. Tanaka's humble origins seemed to affirm the broader transformation; tales of his youth are staples of Japanese political lore, his country's equivalent of the Lincoln log-cabin legend.
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