Unfortunately, the motherboard on my main desktop PC is totally fried, so I am typing
this column up on my friend's Toshiba laptop with the irritating keys that are so
hard to type with. However, I didn't want to skip a week so I am forced to
improvise. I might be up a creek unless I can build or borrow a new or used PC by
next Saturday. Enough whining, on with the column!!
Donald Richie helped to introduce Japanese movies to the West, in a way that had
never been done been before. He is responsible for American audiences to first see
Kurosawa movies that would one day influence George Lucas.
Donald Richie grew up in the small town of Lima, Ohio and longed to get away so he
joined the Merchant Marines during World War II. After Japan surrendered and the
Occupation began, Richie was sent over to be a typist for the military. Richie
interviewed a homeless man who was on the streets due to the extreme poverty of the
War. This article earned Richie a job as a reporter and he was off and running.
He started out as a film critic for Pacific Stars and Stripes, a military newspaper.
Richie reviewed American movies for American families stationed in Tokyo. Gradually
he shifted away from American movies and started watching Japanese movies, despite
having no Japanese language skills. Despite no comprehension of dialogue and plot,
Richie could observe emotions, camera angles, environmental settings, and gestures.
Eventually Richie teamed up with Joseph Anderson and together they wrote the first
book on Japanese movies called The Japanese Film: Art and Industry in 1959. The
popularity of this book led to Richie organizing Japanese movies for European Film
Festivals where he introduced Japanese movies, directors, stars, and screenwriters
for the first time. He also organized Japanese movies in the U.S. Richie wrote the
best film biography on Ozu Yasujiro, a director who focused on home drama about
Japanese life. The book is called simply, Ozu, and describes Ozu's directing methods
and film production. Ozu directed his masterpiece called Tokyo Story about an
elderly couple whose own grown up children neglect them. Tokyo Story is still
influencing Asian filmmakers today.
Donald Richie has also written the definite study on Kurosawa called The Films of
Akira Kurosawa that offered the first Kurosawa biography in English and the first
critical look at movies like Seven Samurai and the Academy Award winning Rashomon.
Donald has always managed to stay ahead of his other fellow Japanologists by getting
there first. He studied Zen with the great Zen Master, D.T. Suzuki, long before
Suzuki visited the U.S. To teach Zen to hippies during the '60s. Richie was also a
good friend of Japan's greatest modern writer, Mishima Yukio, the Hemingway of
Japan.
Donald Richie believes that a critic should know something about the trade before he
or she engages in writing about it. In other words, a music critic should learn to
play a musical instrument and a film critic should make movies. With that in mind,
Richie made several experimental movies in Tokyo that cover a wide range of topics
and ideas and that still continue to influence Japanese writers, filmmakers, and
artists.
After writing over 80 books on almost every aspect of Japan from gardens, to sushi,
movies, books, writers, travel, historical novels, sex, tattoos, and popular
culture, Richie is widely considered the Japan expert. He knows Tokyo so well that
he gave tours to Duke Ellington and Truman Capote.
Richie even helps out Temple University by being a guest lecturer on Ozu for the
Japanese film class.
Now in his mid-80's, Richie could sit back and relax, but he doesn't. He has just
published a new travel book that takes you on a sightseeing tour of Tokyo through
words and pictures in Tokyo: Megacity. Donald Richie never tires of writing and
speaking about Tokyo and Japanese people for the past 60 years that he has been a
Tokyo resident. Most Americans left when the Occupation ended and Richie has stayed
and thrived.
To comment on this or any other PCR article, please visit The Message Board. "The Asian Aperture" is ©2010 by Jason Fetters. Webpage design and all graphics herein (except where otherwise noted) are creations of Nolan B. Canova. All contents of Nolan's Pop Culture Review are ©2010 by Nolan B. Canova.