Lost Japan: Last Glimpse of Beautiful Japan

Once Japan was a place of primeval forest and pristine mountains. In recent decades, this ancient world has almost been destroyed. Alex Kerr’s evocative, prize-winning Lost Japan ranges over Kabuki theatre, tea ceremonies, art, landscape, financial bubbles and his own childhood in Japan to explore a vanishing culture

Originally written in Japanese, this passionate, vividly personal book draws on the author’s experiences in Japan over thirty years. Alex Kerr brings to life the ritualized world of Kabuki, retraces his initiation into Tokyo’s boardrooms during the heady Bubble Years, and tells the story of the hidden valley that became his home. But the book is not just a love letter. Haunted throughout by nostalgia for the Japan of old, Kerr’s book is part paean to that great country and culture, part epitaph in the face of contemporary Japan’s environmental and cultural destruction.

Publisher: Penguin

Paperback

2015

ISBN: 9780141979748