A Tokyo Romance

「紐約書評編輯伊恩‧布魯瑪在這本清楚、讓人不得不全神貫注的回憶錄中，敘述他在一九七零年代晚期的東京，在充滿藝術性的下層世界中的體驗」─出版家周刊布魯瑪在一九七五年到訪日本東京，當時日本已度過戰亂紛擾，在重建過程中蓋了許多新的建築，但從戰火中存活下來的寺廟古蹟都還在城市中佔有自己的角落，在新舊交替的街景中還可以窺探歷史的痕跡。布魯瑪看見的東京是充滿生氣、色彩，甚至有點超現實般的夢幻，霓虹燈、大紅燈籠、夜總會高調地照亮整個城市，在他眼中，東京正在經歷巨大的改變，而這些改變為布魯瑪帶來很大的影響。布魯瑪是紐約書評的編輯，已出版數本著作，寫作特色就是清楚清晰紀錄事件，在這本回憶錄中，他寫下自己造訪東京後的感想，不管是新舊交替、東西交流、外人文化，都讓他大開眼界。A classic memoir of self-invention in a strange land: Ian Buruma's unflinching account of his amazing journey into the heart of Tokyo's underground culture as a young man in the 1970'sWhen Ian Buruma arrived in Tokyo in 1975, Japan was little more than an idea in his mind, a fantasy of a distant land. A sensitive misfit in the world of his upper middleclass youth, what he longed for wasn’t so much the exotic as the raw, unfiltered humanity he had experienced in Japanese theater performances and films, witnessed in Amsterdam and Paris. One particular theater troupe, directed by a poet of runaways, outsiders, and eccentrics, was especially alluring, more than a little frightening, and completely unforgettable. If Tokyo was anything like his plays, Buruma knew that he had to join the circus as soon as possible.Tokyo was an astonishment. Buruma found a feverish and surreal metropolis where nothing was understated—neon lights, crimson lanterns, Japanese pop, advertising jingles, and cabarets. He encountered a city in the midst of an economic boom where everything seemed new, aside from the isolated temple or shrine that had survived the firestorms and earthquakes that had levelled the city during the past century. History remained in fragments: the shapes of wounded World War II veterans in white kimonos, murky old bars that Mishima had cruised in, and the narrow alleys where street girls had once flitted. Buruma’s Tokyo, though, was a city engaged in a radical transformation. And through his adventures in the world of avant garde theater, his encounters with carnival acts, fashion photographers, and moments on-set with Akira Kurosawa, Buruma underwent a radical transformation of his own. For an outsider, unattached to the cultural burdens placed on the Japanese, this was a place to be truly free.A Tokyo Romance is a portrait of a young artist and the fantastical city that shaped him. With his signature acuity, Ian Buruma brilliantly captures the historical tensions between east and west, the cultural excitement of 1970s Tokyo, and the dilemma of the gaijin in Japanese society, free, yet always on the outside. The result is a timeless story about the desire to transgress boundaries: cultural, artistic, and sexual.