A Tokyo Romance

I’ve read numerous memoirs set in Japan at this point and almost all of them covered a handful of topics – the Japanese quirks, exotic cuisine, an amalgamation of the traditional and modern Japanese culture – but this memoir traces the provenance of Japanese theatre, arts, and photography. The latter half of the book touches upon the tendency of westerners to be obliged to blend in with the insular Japanese society and how it often ends up with them giving up and returning to their homelands. This is precisely how the author has structured the book together, he starts off with the nascent excitement of moving to another country and then goes back and forth to being “accepted” and then being “left out” by his troupe, eventually moving away to London after 6 long years. The journey itself is worth a read.