The Inland Sea
Donald Richie
Language: English
Pages: 288
ISBN: 1611720249
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
"An elegiac prose celebration . . . a classic in its genre."—Publishers Weekly
In this acclaimed travel memoir, Donald Richie paints a memorable portrait of the island-studded Inland Sea. His existential ruminations on food, culture, and love and his brilliant descriptions of life and landscape are a window into an Old Japan that has now nearly vanished. Included are the twenty black and white photographs by Yoichi Midorikawa that accompanied the original 1971 edition.
Donald Richie (1924–2013) was an internationally recognized expert on Japanese culture and film.
Yoichi Midorikawa (1915–2001) was one of Japan's foremost nature photographers.
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entryway, smiling, shifting their feet and dabbing at their make-up, casting glances the while. And it is an illusion, though one wonderfully sustained. These people belong to the world of mizu shobai. This is an interesting phrase, perhaps a poetical one. The mizu is “water” and shobai is “business.” But there are other connotations, particularly in the water aspect, which not only suggest the unstable world in which entertainers have to make their living, but also the stream along which we all
and the West’s open wound suppurating behind a bandage. The Japanese disclaims nothing and, at the same time, really hides little. For this reason, the Japanese mind has always reminded me of the Japanese garden, which is a place that nature plainly made but which man has just as plainly ordered. The insipidity of nature tamed, as seen in the Western garden, is missing, but so is the awesomeness of the jungle. It is a wilderness but not a chaos. There are many paths, and if they turn and double
Ivan the Terrible, Dianne de Poitiers, and John Calvin (my interjection, not his)—on his way to the Korean wars, and the remnants of the Heike clan, whose retreat from the battle of Yashima covered most of these islands. Also there was Keikoin. He was a very strong priest, and he was born here, a local hero. He was useful. When the great west winds came and the boats could not leave, he would go out, tell everyone to hang on, and push, right into the teeth of the wind. This single push would
seems no more reprehensible than stealing from the A&P. But the picture is firmly attached to the wall. The art stretches on, a Sans Souci, a Xanadu. The holy man has collected everything. Its presence does not contribute much to his grand design, to this Disneyland of fine architecture, perhaps, but then Kanemoto has something larger in view. I turn back to look at it all, blinding in the afternoon sun. It is absurd, beautiful, very Japanese. ••••• THE PEOPLE IN the temple, the whole town,
now dried, crisp, powdering underfoot. Was the water ever this high? I wonder. The seaweed festoons the walls. It looks like an underwater ballroom, the first-class lounge of some great and sunken ship. ••••• IT IS NIGHT. We pass islands that are great collections of shining standing tubes, clusters of enormous aluminum balls, covering the land with their metallic undergrowth, and whose purpose I do not know. They puff and sigh as we pass, reflected in the endless rows of perfectly spaced