Donald Richie: the gay Lafcadio Hearn of our time
Over at the London Review of Books there is an incredibly wordy review of Donald Richie’s lastest book ‘The Japan Journals: 1947-2004′. The book is a collection of stories from Richie’s life in Japan: he first came to Japan in 1947 and spend most of the second half of the 20th century as a Japanophilic scholar living in Japan. You’d probably expect his journals to be full of stories about how he came to appreciate Japans four seasons, the marvelous entertainment value of Noh theater and the wonderful taste of natto. However, the book (or perhaps just the reviewer) seems to have a focus on Donald Richie’s homosexuality:
There is another lucky side effect for many expatriates: personal alienation, the inescapable sense of being different from everyone else, is cancelled out, or at least rendered invisible, by the larger, universal alienation of being a gaijin. This is the partial explanation for something else remarked on several times by Richie: as he shyly puts it, ‘the strange prevalence of people of like preferences among foreign Japanese specialists’. To be blunter, Richie and a seemingly disproportionate number of his friends and contemporaries – the formidable generation of scholars and translators of Japanese who encountered the country as young men during the US occupation – are homosexual.
Yep, that’s right, Japan scholars are a bunch of homosexuals. In his journals, Richie nostalgically writes about his first sexual experience, being molested as at age 6 by a man in the park. In his later life, he enjoys seducing young men who have come to Japan to study:
As a lover, too, Richie is loyal and responsible, and becomes a lifelong ally to several of the younger, mostly heterosexual men whom he seduces – meeting their oblivious families, helping to put them through school, attending their weddings, investing in their businesses and becoming a friend to their wives and children. But here and there are hints of a wilder, less steady and more tormented personality.
Of course, like any hardcore Japanophile, Richie is absolutely disgusted when foreigners complain about any aspect of Japan. The reviewer notes that none of Richie’s works seem to paint Japan in a negative light. Until the Richie saw his precious Japan changing, that is:
The growing self-confidence and obnoxiousness of Japan coincide with his descent into the conservatism of old age. Richie wryly recognises the irony in all this, although he is never able to forgive Japanese youths for their disinclination to be seduced by him; their fecklessness, stupidity and philistinism are a recurring and rather tiresome theme in the second half of this book. Subtlety and complexity desert him as he ventures out from his base in old-fashioned Ueno to cast his fogeyish eye over the youthful ‘hordes’ in ‘noisome’ Shibuya and Roppongi. ‘They lurch and spill on the pavement and in a group sound like a herd of elephants . . . Young people with their Walkmen and manga, their portable phones – not only do they not know one flower from another, they do not even see them . . . this generation was taught nothing . . . the latest gadget satisfies it; it goes to see Star Wars.’ Even masturbation is not what it used to be, as a fellow regular at Richie’s local porn cinema comments: instead of lending one another a hand, young Japanese onanists ‘buy a tape, or rent it, and take it back home and lock the door’.
How dare they modernize their country! Reading manga instead of the Manyoushu?!! And the nerve of them, not engaging in gay handjobs at porno theaters anymore! What has this country come to! It appears that Richie is yet another foreigner obsessed with preserving “the real Japan.” The reviewer goes on, tearing at Richie:
‘These youthful herds await a deliverer, someone to organise them, and a country to give up everything for,’ he fulminates, in an especially barmy entry. ‘Someone like Mussolini or the Emperor Hirohito.’ Yet it was Richie’s generation, ‘that friendly, ragged, wily, beautiful, and hopeful crew’ of wartime Japanese with whom he fell in love, who submitted to fascism, who swarmed so murderously into China and South-East Asia, and who piloted the suicide planes. By almost any other standard, the young in Japan today are exemplary: a little glazed and indifferent from the outside, but politer, calmer and more law abiding than their contemporaries anywhere in the world. Richie may find it harder to seduce them as he circumambulates the park, but he is not going to be beaten up, robbed or murdered by them either.
Sadly, the reviewer notes that many of gay romance portions of the journals were edited out, to be used in a later work. Perhaps only then will we know how many boys he has ’seduced’ or the full story of his relationship with Edward Seidensticker or Yukio Mishima. The final line of the review pretty much sums up the reviewer’s feelings about Richie:
In 150 years, foreigners in Japan have produced important works of history, political science, anthropology and journalism, but no lasting work of literature. Perhaps Donald Richie shows us why.
Ouch.
Full RSS Feed
Ouch indeed!
Rate this comment:
0 
0
Dont be hard on Richie: He is simply reflecting the views of the Japanese class that he assimilated into. Its not as if his views havent been expressed previously, presently and more eloquently by many Japanese writers. I rather sympathise with him – He must be awfully lonely as an old guy now…though I rather doubt all the nonsense about the Japanese being less easy to seduce…Richie is probably just too old. Richie\’s observations about the pulsing erosisme that lies behind the prissiness of the Japanese facade are spot on. When the reviewer interpretes Richie\’s declining successes with a change in Japan, I think he misses the point. I daresay group masturbation still occurs, young foreigners still seduce Japanese youth and so on. The book is simply the understandable lament of an old dirty man.
Rate this comment:
0 
0
I agree, Chuckles. The reviewer seems really put off by the revelation that Richie liked to seduce boys and engage in group masturbation, and is probably trying to attack Richie as much as possible.
I have to admit, I was really surprised. When I was reading Richie’s film books in college, I had no clue that Richie and large portion of gaijin scholars in Japan were engaging in homosexual sex fests.
Rate this comment:
0 
0
I met Richie once at University of Pittsburgh. He gave a very good lecture on Japan since the war. He likened Japan to a river, constantly changing, but in that river were blocks of amber. Those were the old traditional things that would never change.
I found it to be a very good metaphor. Never knew he was into butt-banging little boys and circle jerking, but to each his own.
Rate this comment:
0 
0
Focusing on Richie’s (or Seidensticker’s) homosexuality (or any other professional’s for that matter) is to miss the point entirely. Who cares if the guy likes the cock? Richie is first and formost amongst western scholars of Japanese film. His professional work in that area is to this day unsurpassed.
The reviewer’s conclusion is also a red herring. Richie has mostly produced works of non fiction about fiction, not “literature”. That end comment is about as relevant for criticizing Carl Sagan published poetry.
Rate this comment:
0 
0
I agree, the review is overly vicious. But I really can’t blame him for writing such a negative review. If the review was just praise for Richie, it really wouldn’t be interesting enough for people to discuss.
Rate this comment:
0 
0
“Richie is first and formost amongst western scholars of Japanese film. His professional work in that area is to this day unsurpassed.”
Are you kidding? This is a guy who, by his own admission, has been sitting on the sidelines of Japanese pop culture since the late sixties. *Everyone* has surpassed him simply by not hating manga, Star Wars, and Takashi Miike films on principal alone. Those who doubt the “Richie is irrelevant” argument should be forced to read his 2004 book Image Factory: Fads and Fashions in Japan. Imagine a whole book on modern j-pop written by someone with absolutely no aptitude or affection for it.
Rate this comment:
0 
0
Larry:
Richie might not be in tune with great films such as “Ichi the Killer” and “Visitor Q”, but his works on period directors such as Kurosawa and Ozu are still considerably good. Richie is an old man, and he excels at stuff that happened in his era. It is understable that he has no understanding of Japan as it is today. It’s okay to rip on his interpretation of today’s society, but to discount his memoirs of the 1940’s to 1980’s isn’t exactly fair.
If I want to read about the “classic” days of Japanese cinema, I’ll read a Richie book. If I want to read about Mike, I’ll probably read a book by the guy who runs midnight eye. Even if Richie writes books about seducing young men, he remains an expert on Japanese cinema of the olden days.
Rate this comment:
0 
0
I wasn’t ripping on Richie’s old work one bit. His Japanese Film: Art and Industry (co-written by Joseph L. Anderson) is a book I consult often for research purposes.
I think what happened was that for decades there was only one Donald Richie – a gaijin qualified and connected enough to speak with authority about Japanese culture. Now, there are many. Just take a look at that blogroll to the right…
My problem with most of the post Richie film critics is that they tend to lack any formal journalistic training (the Midnight Eye being among the worst offenders) so most of what they write has little to no asthetic value beyond supplying information and filmographies. Richie at his best could actually write. If only he had bothered to try and stay relevant.
Rate this comment:
0 
0
Also, I think it would be sad if, thanks to the London Review, Edward Seidensticker was only remembered as Donald Richie’s butt buddy. His merticulously researched Tokyo histories Low City, High City and Tokyo Rising are really amazing reading and the kind of thing a mere blogger could never pull off. Too bad both titles are long out of print.
Rate this comment:
0 
0
Larry: Its a problem that most of the current jfilm buffs not only cant write, they tend to know shit all about film itself. Im just not impressed when a writer can only discuss the merits of a film by the buckets of blood/shock value/etc.
Part of the problem with going past what Richie has done is that there is now damn little to write about. The Japanese film industry has been on its knees for decades. How can anyone make a name writing about something where there is just so little to write about?
I stand by my statement that Richie remains usurpassed in his area.
Rate this comment:
0 
0
Richie has long been surpassed by *actual* Japanese film and cultural critics such as Sadao Yamane and Takayuki Tatsumi. Since their work has been translated into English of late, the question remains. Does it matter what the old white guy thinks anymore?
Rate this comment:
0 
0
Actually, while Richie’s work is mostly non-fiction, he has written several works of fiction about Japan, all of which are quite good. Also, even though he may seem out-dated to us manga-lovers, it was Richie who almost single-handely introduced Japanese cinema to the West and, as a result, paved the way for the likes of Takashi Miike and Kiyoshi Kurosawa. The London Review of Books review of his journals is just typically snarky and projects way more than it offers. In fact, you’d be better served to read the journals yourself, as they aren’t all about gay sex, and the sex that is chronicled there is rather understated and played down. Lastly, the majority of gaijins living in Japan now, as back in Richie’s earlier days, aren’t sex-crazed gay pedophiles, nor is Donald Richie (gay, yes…pedophile, no…read the journals).
Rate this comment:
0 
0
This appraisal is 100% correct. A lot of the academic guys on Japan are gay. No doubt about it. They used to hide it back in the 1950s, but no more. The interesting thing is most Japanese conservative types don’t notice this, because they have no understanding of western cultural forms, and don’t spot that these guys are gay.
A lot of visiting researchers that come to Harvard from Japan are often shocked at the level of gayness that is the norm here. Many return with negative views of the University here because of it.
The purple hues of the covers of English language Tale of Genji books are not just an accident of the publisher.
Rate this comment:
0 
0