Read Japanese Portraits: Pictures of Different People Online
Authors: Donald Richie
Tags: #Non-Fiction
Japanese Portraits: Pictures of Different People
Other Books by Donald Richie
ON FILM
The Japanese Film: Art and Industry,
with Joseph L. Anderson, 1959
Japanese Movies,
1961
The Japanese Movie: An Illustrated History,
1965
The Films of Akira Kurosawa,
1965
Japanese Cinema, 1971
Ozu,
1976
Viewing Film,
1986
Japanese Cinema: An Introduction,
1990 A
Hundred Years of Japanese Cinema,
2001
ON JAPAN
This Scorching Earth,
1956
Companions of the Holiday,
1968
The Inland Sea, 1971
A
Lateral View, Essays,
1987
Tokyo Nights,
1988
Z
en Inklings,
1992
The Honorable Visitors,
1994
Partial Views, Essays,
1995
The Temples of Kyoto,
1995
Lafcadio Hearn's Japan,
1997
Tokyo: A View of the City
, 1999
The Memoirs of the Warrior Kumagai,
1999
The Donald Richie Reader
(Ed. Arturo Silva)
Japanese Literature Reviewed,
2003
The Image Factory,
2003
A
View from the Chuo Line: Stories,
2004
Japan Journals (1947-2004)
(Ed. Leza Lowitz)
D O N A L D Â R I C H I E
Pictures of Different People
A series of intensely personal portraits of unforgettable
Japanese characters
T U T T L E Â P U B L I S H I N G
Tokyo ⢠Rutland, Vermont ⢠Singapore
The original, unexpanded edition of this book was published by Kodansha International in 1987 in hardcover under the title
Different People
, and in paperback in 1991 as
Geisha, Gangster, Neighbor, Nun.
First Edition,
Different People: Pictures of Some Japanese,
1987
Second Edition,
Geisha, Gangster, Neighbor, Nun: Scenes from Japanese Lives,
1991
Third Edition, augmented and enlarged,
Public People, Private People: Portraits of Some Japanese,
1996
Fourth Edition,
Japanese Portraits: Pictures of Different People
2005
Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd, with editorial offices at 364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon, Vermont 05759 and 61 Tai Seng Avenue, #02-12 Singapore 534167.
Copyright © Donald Richie.
First Tuttle edition, 2006
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-4629-0217-0
Printed in Singapore
Distributed by:
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Contents
Foreword
xi
Isuzu Yamada
151
Kon Ichikawa
156
Chishu Ryu
183
Mayumi Oda
201
The idea for this work came after much of it was written. From journal entries, diary jottings, failed stories and novels, I had accumulated a number of pages that appeared to be interesting, but I did not know how to use them. There seemed to be no form that would hold together pieces this various.
Then, as I was reading Marguerite Yourcenar's book on Mishima, I came across this passage: "A chain is formed of people different from one another, who are united, incomprehensibly, because we have chosen them." And I knew what this collection of mine was about and what form it should take.
I had for some time wanted to write of my years in Japan, more than half my life, but I did not want to write a memoir; those I had read seemed so explanatory, so self-serving. But here, by assembling a group of stray people who had lived on in memory, I saw a way of recording some of my own experiences without "exploiting" them. The deeper experiences might be excluded, but what perhaps counts mostâthe dappled surface of life itselfâwould be visible. And I would be there among the crowd.
I had no model for this book, though I much admired the collected character studies of the nineteenth-century Japanese writer Doppo Kunikida and his talent for what he called "sketching from life." But I did have a number of anti-models. These were those books on Japan which are written entirely in generalities. It is all them-and-us, and "the Japanese" who emerge from these works bear little resemblance to any Japanese I have ever known. I had become impatient reading about such all-explaining qualities as
giri
and
ninjo, hone
and
tatemae, ura
and
omote,
and all the rest of these abstractions. Such hypothetical opposites do exist in Japan, but they exist everywhere else as well. The terms describe theories, not people. In this collection, I wanted to draw particular likenesses undisturbed by theoretical considerations.
My methods vary. There are views from the outside, views from the inside; there are monologues and dialogues; interviews and impressionistic descriptions. If the techniques of fiction are used, they are employed only so that the likeness may the more clearly emerge. I am writing about people, not "a people"; a series of portraits of certain Japanese I have known personally, each of whom, being human, is unique.
Donald Richie
I awoke early that midsummer morning in 1946. The sun was not yet up and the eastern sky over the sleeping sea was dark. Walking toward the still surf over the cold sand, where I had walked the afternoon before, I suddenly stopped.
Something had changed. It had not been like this yesterday. Then there had been fishing boats and drying nets and people from the village. Now it was deserted and the beach was filled with mounds of sand, pocked with the large holes from which it came.
There were a number of them, these strange holes. I peered in the faint light, the eastern horizon now a hazy gray. There were perhaps twenty in all, as though a small army had dug in during the night.
Then, in the growing light, I saw that each of the holes seemed to be occupied. Something was lying in each. I ceased thinking about war and began to think about an invasion of creatures from the sea. It must be a migration of sea turtles, I decided, come to lay eggs.
Slowly I walked over the sand to the nearest and looked down. There, lying like a chick in its shell, was a small boy. In the next one too another was curled, and in the next. The beach was pitted with holes and in each was a sleeping child.
As the darkness drained from the sky, I stood in the middle of this foreign sandscape and wondered what had happened. It resembled a battlefield. The end of the Pacific war was just a year behindâthoughts of battles, bodies, came easily.
Then one of the small bodies stirred. A hand was thrown across the eyes. Overhead the sky was that dim, translucent gray which precedes dawn.
Another of the bodies, one further away, moved, and I saw a small knee shift. At the same time I was aware of the whisper of the surf, as though it too had just awakened, stirred by the growing day.
As the horizon warmed to a faint yellow, I moved across the still cold sand and looked into the holes. The children were all quite young. The eldest, in the largest hole, could have been no more than twelve or so. The youngest, in the mousehole he had dug himself, seemed only five or six. All were sleeping curled in their sand nests, all were alive, all now waking in the early light like the newly hatched.
The surf began to splash as though the unseen sun was working on it, and with a yawn a head appeared over the rim of sand, looked toward the east, then with a sigh disappeared. When I reached his burrow the child was again asleep, knees drawn up.
What were they doing, why were they here, I wondered, standing over this small, sleeping army. I was curious but not surprised. It was, after all, a magical land, as I had learned, a place where the mysterious often occurred. Just the day before, on arrival from Tokyo, we had walked along this beachâKujukurihama, in Chibaâand I had stopped in surprise at the sight of the fishermen.
Young and old alike, they were utterly naked as they worked at their nets, helped by half-clad wives and sisters. Each of the men wore only a headband and, as I soon noticed, a narrow red ribbon around his penis.
They saw us there and smiled, nodded. Not at all self-conscious, they went on with their work.
-Â It's something to do with not offending the sea goddess, said one of us.
-Â Going naked like that?
-Â No, wearing the ribbon.