Speaker: Donald Richie, author of Ozu, The Inland Sea, etc. Donald Richie is widely regarded as the pre-eminent Western authority on Japanese cinema, a reputation that was first established by the publication of The Japanese Film: Art and Industry (Tuttle, 1959, Princeton Univ. Pr., 1982) by Richie and Joseph L. Anderson. Among the eight books on Japanese cinema that Richie has written are definitive studies of the films of the directors Yasujiro Ozu, Ozu: His Life and Films (Univ. of California Pr., 1974) and Akira Kurosawa, The Films of Akira Kurosawa (Univ. of California Pr., 1965 and 1998). Richie's worldwide reputation as a Japanese film critic was most recently reinforced by the publication of A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History, with a Selective Guide to Videos and DVDs (Kodansha International, 2001 and 2005). To
English-newspaper readers in Tokyo, Richie is well known as the author
of weekly book reviews that have appeared since 1972 in "The Asian
Bookshelf" feature in The Japan Times. A selection of Donald Richie's book reviews, Japanese Literature Reviewed (ICG Muse, 2003), evi- Japanophiles have for years been
entertained and enlightened by his occasionally funny and always
insightful essays on contemporary Japan, twenty-three of which have
been collected in Richie is arguably best known to English readers worldwide as the author of The Inland Sea
(Weatherhill, 1971; Stone Bridge Pr., 2002), a compelling travel memoir
that was adapted in 1992 into an award-winning PBS documentary. This
book, which Richie lists under his works of fiction, is considered by
many to be his masterpiece. Published at about the midpoint of his
six-decade stay in Japan, The Inland Sea presents Richie's fully matured view of the Japanese. Richie's most recent venture into the travel genre is Travels in the East (Stone
Bridge Pr., 2008), an anthology of twenty-two essays chronicling
travels undertaken between 1963 (Ryoan-ji, Japan) and 2007 (Burma). Your ticket for admission to Donald Richie's BOOKNOTES presentation "The Art of Writing a Short Story" will be a copy of Botandoro, purchased from Good Day Books. Paperback copies of Botandoro are available from Good Day Books for „2100 each, tax included. Couples who wish to attend "The Art of Writing a Short Story" may purchase a copy of Botandoro and a copy of A View from the Chuo Line in lieu of two copies of Botandoro. Paperback copies of A View from the Chuo Line may be purchased at Good Day Books for „1575 each, tax included. Those who would like to learn more about Donald Richie may wish to read articles that appeared in Metropolis Issue #504 http://metropolis.japantoday.com/tokyo/504/feature.asp on November 21, 2003 and Issue #596 http://metropolis.japantoday.com/tokyo/596/feature.asp on August 26, 2005. A much fuller view of Donald Richie than provided by the present sketch may be obtained from the sensitively selected writings that appear in The Donald Richie Reader: 50 Years of Writing on Japan (Stone Bridge Press, 2001). Signed copies of all of the books mentioned in the present sketch, as well as several books by Richie that are not mentioned, may be purchased at Good Day Books.
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