| NOTA |
(★)(´Despite press reports about Japan´s amazing post-war industrial achievements,´ writes Nina Epton,´many people tend to look upon the Japanese either as ruthless business men or as rather quaint ´objets d´arts´ ; both views are tinged by wartime prejudices and memories. What are the Japanese like today, seventeen years after the war and Hiroshima? That is what I wanted to find out and I believed that the only way to do so was to live in Japanese style with Japanese families.´ This is what Nina Epton did, visiting over a period of three months the main island of Honshu and then Kyushu island in the south, meeting all types of people from priests to farmers´ wives and staying in many different kinds of homes. One minute she would find herself in a luxurious western-style apartment and the next in a humble room over a barber´s shop, and once in a Buddhist temple. Wherever she went she was touched by the charm and friendliness of her Japanese hosts. Expecting to find bitterness and resentment in Hiroshima, she found only Buddhist resignation to life´s transitoriness and a sincere desire for peace. Proud of their new status as the fourth largest industrial country in the world, the Japanese are desperately anxious to be modern, but while the younger generation discard the kimono in favour of western dress, many of the old customs and traditions remain, for westernization is still only on the surface. Picnics under the cherry blossom, geishas temples and tea ceremonies --everything one associates with Japan still flourishes. It is all vividly described here and a lot more beside. There are stories of gypsies who have hot baths in the middle of the jungle, of the weird torchlit ´water drawing´ ceremony in Nara, of the Japanese craze for photography, for tours and for ´English conversation´ and even an account of the author´s own visit to a public baths where she provided the unusual and astonishing spectacle of a white foreigner obligingly scrubbing the back of a Japanese woman. Such are a few of the host of stories Miss Epton has to tell, throughout them radiating her immense vitality, enthusiasm and insatiable curiosity which make ´Seaweed for Breakfast´ not only a delightful account of her experiences, but an intimate and fascinating picture of Japanese home life as it is lived today.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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