Seidentsticker to speak in Ebisu on 24th

[Mulboyne]

Seidensticker still outspoken

The Japanese are just like other people. They work hard to support their--but no. They are not like other people. They are infinitely more clannish, insular, parochial, and one owes it to one's self-respect to preserve a sense of outrage at the insularity. To have the sense of outrage go dull is to lose the will to communicate]The Daily Yomiuri May 16, 1962 [/i]

The above excerpt from the last edition of an acerbic column titled "This Country" that Seidensticker wrote for this newspaper for four years drips with disillusionment...I recently visited the 83-year-old Seidensticker...to revisit his past and find out whether his opinion of Japan and the Japanese had softened over the four decades since he penned his vituperative sayonara column, whose final paragraph was "the most quoted statement I have ever made."
"I feel very different now. I got very tired of being a foreigner, but I've come in the years since to believe that it's a hell of a lot easier to be a foreigner in Japan than it is to be a Japanese. I think the salaried man lives a dreadful life; a perfectly dreadful life."

Edward Seidensticker will give a talk titled "Japan, the Insular, and Myself" at Good Day Books in Ebisu, Tokyo, at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 24. For more information, visit http://www.gooddaybooks.com

[Charles]

Seidensticker still outspoken

Dead link.

Anyone have a copy of the last "This Country" column cited in the article? Sounds like an interesting read.

[Mulboyne]

Dead link.

Sorry, I always seem to screw up the Yomiuri links. Should be Ok now.

[kamome]

Both of Seidensticker's memoirs rely on extracts from a diary that he has faithfully kept for decades, except for occasional gaps occasioned by personal quirks that he candidly acknowledges - "I think I may have been drinking. That is the usual explanation for lacunae in my diary."

Does that not sound like a typical FG to you? Definitely one of the "OFG" - Original Fucked Gaijin.

Your ticket for admission to Edward Seidensticker's presentation will be a signed copy of his latest memoir, Tokyo Central. Signed hardcover copies of Tokyo Central may be purchased at Good Day Books for three thousand seven hundred eighty yen (3780) each, tax included.

Not sure if I want to be forced to buy the guy's book just to hear him speak... Anyone else going to this?

[Kuang_Grade]

I was actually in the store on Monday (scored some beat up mass market mystery novels by Delacorta that have been out of print in the US for a while), and I chatted with the guy I presume is the owner...Seemed like a nice enough fellow and I believe he mentioned this guy during our chat and that the event was sold out....but he might have been talking about another event. So if you any of you are thinking of going, you might want to give the shop a call to check if tickets are still available.

[Charles]

This is a job for RobPongi or Mr. Sparkle. Hell, if I could afford it, I'd fly over just to tape the presentation. If anyone can get a video, or even an audio tape, I'd be glad to host it on my server. I'm considering whether I should ask one of you guys to buy one of the autographed books and send it to me, but I'm rather short on cash lately. Hmm.. I've gone without food to buy books before...

BTW, I hope I'm not stating the terribly obvious here, but the title of this presentation is a play on Oe Kenzaburo's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, "Japan, the Ambiguous, and Me." Seidensticker's speech should be on that level, or he wouldn't dare play with Oe like that.

[Mulboyne]

Kuang_Grade was spot on.

Yomiuri: Frustrated fans miss Seidensticker talk

A talk by scholar and literary translator Edward Seidensticker drew a capacity crowd Oct. 24 at Good Day Books in Ebisu, Tokyo, leaving some fans locked out on the shop's doorstep. Seidensticker fan Karen Henton said she was "shocked and appalled...at the way Good Day Books neglected to provide adequate information" in advance of the event. Admission to the event was the purchase of a signed copy of Seidensticker's Tokyo Central, but when Henton arrived the books were sold out and she was not admitted to the store.

She and five other people tried to observe the event through a glass door, but the door was not opened to help them hear, and the manager spoke to them "rudely" afterward, Henton said. Good Day manager Steve Kott said the requirement to purchase a book "while our supply lasts" was noted on the store's Web site (http://www.gooddaybooks.com). The store admitted 38 people, the maximum it could safely hold for the event, he said.

Kott said numerous people who called or e-mailed were told the event was sold out, but he admitted he did not have time to add this information to the Web site. He said patrons should always call ahead. Seidensticker is noted for his memoirs and his translations of Junichiro Tanizaki, Yukio Mishima and The Tale of Genji. His Good Day speech was part of a series, following one by Donald Richie that Kott said drew a dangerously large crowd. Tokyo Confidential author Mark Schreiber and Confessions of a Yakuza author Junichi Saga are expected to appear in the future, Kott said.

But Henton said Good Day had "effectively lost many patrons...including myself."

[Taro Toporific]

His Good Day speech was part of a series, following one by Donald Richie that Kott said drew a dangerously large crowd. Tokyo Confidential author Mark Schreiber and Confessions of a Yakuza author Junichi Saga are expected to appear in the future, Kott said.

[b]Delightfully Displaced
---As a perennial outsider at loose in Japan, writer Donald Richie captures the joyous freedom of being foreign---
/b]BY PICO IYER / Time magazine
Thursday, Nov. 04, 2004The expatriate in Asia is often a complainer: things are so different there from the way they are in wherever he thinks of as home that he feels aggrieved, ripped off, patronized or left out....

[Captain Japan]

[Captain Japan]