Looking for the Lost: Journeys Through a Vanishing Japan

Rating:
Summary: Not just for folks who have lived there
Review: I have never lived in Japan, but have visited, and found a certain "something" wonderful about that country and its people that I could never find adequate words to describe. Alan Booth communicates both the mystique and the down-to-earth attitude Westerner finds in Japan--I think it's that "something" that I've searched my own intellect, but failed, to describe. Reading Alan Booth's "Looking for the Lost" has helped me to connect with those subtle attractions that I found in Japan, and that kept me returning.

Since most reader-reviewers recommend this book to those who have lived in Japan, I'll add my voice and recommend it to those who have spent limited time there, or who are planning to travel in the outer-reaches of this gorgeous country.

Rating:
Summary: An historical anthropology
Review: I have read Alan Booth's other great travelogue 'The Roads to Sata', which is as compelling as the present book. I have lived in Japan for a little over two years now and have studied it's culture for more than eight, but I can't remember ever reading a book (besides the one mentioned above) that was so revealing for the experience of life in Japan through the eyes of a foreigner, that I even felt as though I was walking alongside Alan Booth as he describes his visits to almost completely forgotten places and his encounters with and thoughts on the people he meets during his long walks. It actually would have been a great opportunity for me, if I had been given the chance to walk (or I should rather say 'limp', because of the blistering, and so on, feet) with him, since the thorough preparations he undoubtedly has made before every 'excursion' through the remote areas in this book would have rendered such an occasion a magnificent learning experience, listening every now and then to his stories about the areas' history as well as local traditions. In the process meeting with any number of interesting and not so interesting people, making up the colorful background to the stories. This is a highly recommended book for anyone truly interested in Japan as it is not advertised in tourist brochures.

Rating:
Summary: An historical anthropology
Review: I received this book from a friend shortly before returning to Japan to begin my life there again. Having read it in various stages of travel and arrival (I happened to be reading his funny, spot-on description of modern Nagoya when my plane touched down there) I was struck with how Booth can hollow out an empathetic place in the reader's soul for Japan and then fill it with keen, often wistful observations that invariably bypass the throwaway, surface image and instead imbue everything with 'mono no oware', or "the sadness of things." In a literary as well as literal sense, this author always takes the unexpected path, and the result is a deeply felt chronicle of wonder and longing.

I would especially recommend this book to those who have lived in Japan, as many of the observations and descriptions Booth records will most likely complete a half-formed thought or two that has been eluding your ability to state it precisely.

In short, this is a marvelous book, made all the more poignant by the idea that the wistful voices of the past and the echoing footfalls of the various journeys he recalls here are now all that remains of the author.

Rating:
Summary: The Sadness of Things
Review: I received this book from a friend shortly before returning to Japan to begin my life there again. Having read it in various stages of travel and arrival (I happened to be reading his funny, spot-on description of modern Nagoya when my plane touched down there) I was struck with how Booth can hollow out an empathetic place in the reader's soul for Japan and then fill it with keen, often wistful observations that invariably bypass the throwaway, surface image and instead imbue everything with 'mono no oware', or "the sadness of things." In a literary as well as literal sense, this author always takes the unexpected path, and the result is a deeply felt chronicle of wonder and longing.

I would especially recommend this book to those who have lived in Japan, as many of the observations and descriptions Booth records will most likely complete a half-formed thought or two that has been eluding your ability to state it precisely.

In short, this is a marvelous book, made all the more poignant by the idea that the wistful voices of the past and the echoing footfalls of the various journeys he recalls here are now all that remains of the author.

Rating:
Summary: If you've lived in Japan, you'll love these travelogues
Review: I recently picked up "Looking for the Lost" in a Kyoto bookshop at the beginning of a short journey of my own through central Japan - I was hooked within the first five pages by the powerful combination of Booth's smooth prose style - so smooth you can almost imagine the writer reading his work to you - and his refreshingly sharp insight into so many of the quirks of Japanese culture that leave most westerners bemused/confused, even those of us who have been here a while. Booth has a great way of telling you about some aspect of Japanese culture without making you feel like a complete beginner. Again, you can almost imagine being there with the author, sharing a joke about some of those country grannies or the women at public events dressed almost entirely in latex who somehow seem so polite and squeaky that you can't believe they're real! Add to this Booth's sense of the history of all the places he trudges through, and you really come to appreciate just how vivid he manages to make these narrative journeys.

Rating:
Summary: Journey through Japan
Review: I wish I could write as entertainingly as Alan Booth. This book will not disappoint you, especially if you like traveling and are fascinated with Japan. And if not, it's still a great read anyway.

The most brilliant thing about this book is that the author combines Japanese history into his narratives as he traces three historical figures and/or locations in Japan by foot. The way he makes the characteres he meets along the way of his journey come to life is outstanding. I really enjoy this book and wish that he had written others before he died. The only thing that bothered me somewhat and makes me feel unsympathetic towards him, however, is that he drank too much. But who am I to judge? This is a great book. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: an outsider's inside look at Japan
Review: This is a facinating book. You get unusual and fresh perspectives on national/racial identity and the travel book. The story of how Alan Booth came to Japan, and his unique viewpoint as a foreigner who speaks the language, and knows as much or more about Japanese culture than many of the natives, is woven throughout his accounts of walking through different areas of the country. The way the people he meets view him, and the way he reacts and responds to them is often funny, and just as often instructive and meaningful. This a great book, and reveals much upon repeated readings. I only wish there more from him.

Rating:
Summary: a great traveling book
Review: Through gangsters, school children, scholars and maids Booth let us taste, smell and feel a country so sure of itself and yet struggling to define the changes that have been shaking it for the last century. Allmost as a poet boot write about the everyday people and among them the ones still belong to a world soon to be gone. This is the swan song of a man who let us,through his words, to see the beauty of a culture, feel the pain of its departure and taste the bitter cold beer. May he rest in peace.

Rating:
Summary: Sadness Over the Horizon
Review: Will some publisher PLEASE print a collection of Alan Booth's outstanding newspaper articles? These would be a wonderful complement to Looking for the Lost and Roads to Sata.

Looking for the Lost is an oddity. A book that I remember few details of, yet I remember with great vividness that I was moved by a intangible sadness that was always just over the next horizon of his journeys. Alan Booth was a writer of invincible good humor. Too much so to speak of his own impending death (though his newspaper writings about his trials with the Japanese medical system are classic). But the alert reader is constantly aware of an impending passing of life, seemingly inseparable from the passing of beauty in this country.

I was in Japan during the final years of Alan Booth's life here, pretty much in the same circles. It is my deep regret that I never took the trouble to make his acquaintance.