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Donald Richie, American Expert on Japan, Is Dead at 88
Donald Richie, 88, American Expert on Japan, Is Dead
(about 11 hours later)
Donald Richie, one of the most prominent American writers on Japan and on expatriate life, who is best known for introducing the English-speaking world to the golden age of Japanese cinema, including the director Akira Kurosawa, died on Tuesday at a hospital in Tokyo. He was 88.
Donald Richie, a prominent American critic and writer on Japan who helped introduce much of the English-speaking world to the golden age of Japanese cinema in 1959 and recounted his expatriate life there spanning seven decades, died on Tuesday in Tokyo. He was 88.
Mr. Richie had been in poor health for several years, said Christopher Blasdel, a longtime friend of Mr. Richie. He said Mr. Richie died at the University of Tokyo Hospital, where he had been taken after his heart stopped at his apartment in Tokyo.
His death was confirmed by Christopher Blasdel, a friend.
During his life, Mr. Richie wrote prolifically not just on film and culture, but also on his own travels and experiences living in a nation that he watched rise from the wartime ashes to high-tech affluence and then stumble again. He won recognition for his soul-baring descriptions of a lifetime spent mostly in Japan, an impenetrable but permissive society that always held him politely at arm’s length, but that also allowed him to freely explore both its exquisitely refined classical arts and its garishly seedy demimonde.
Mr. Richie wrote prolifically, not just on film and culture in Japan but also on his own travels and experiences there. He won recognition for his soul-baring descriptions of a Westerner’s life in an impenetrable but permissive society that held him politely at arm’s length while allowing him to explore it nonetheless, from its classical arts to its seedy demimonde.
While he preferred to chronicle the private aspects of life rather than big public events, he is widely regarded as a leading interpreter of Japan in a generation of American intellectuals who first encountered the nation as a result of World War II.
Openly bisexual, Mr. Richie also wrote frankly about his lovers, both male and female, saying Japan’s greater tolerance of homosexuality in the 1940s, relative to that in the United States, was one reason he returned to the country after graduating from Columbia University in 1953. Mr. Richie first saw Tokyo as a bombed-out ruin, arriving in 1947 as a 22-year-old typist with the Allied Occupation forces after serving on transport ships during the war. He spent most of the next 66 years in Tokyo, gaining a following among Western readers for textured descriptions of Japan and its people that transcended Western stereotypes.
A native of Lima, Ohio, Mr. Richie first saw Tokyo as a bombed-out ruin, arriving in 1947 as a 22-year-old typist to the Allied Occupation forces, after serving on transport ships during the war. He spent most of the next 66 years in Tokyo, writing some 40 books ranging from studies of flower arranging to historical novels.
“I remain in a state of surprise, and this leads to heightened interest and hence perception,” Mr. Richie wrote in his diary in 1947, describing the thrill of living abroad. “Like a child with a puzzle, I am forever putting pieces together and saying: Of course.”
He won a following among Western readers for his nuanced and sensitive descriptions of Japan and its people that transcended Western stereotypes of the country. His works, like the 1971 travelogue “The Inland Sea,” were widely praised for their finely textured portraits of Japanese individuals, both famous and ordinary, that humanized the former wartime foe.
His books — some 40 altogether — were wide-ranging, including historical novels, studies of flower arranging and travelogues, which were widely praised for humanizing a people still remembered in the United States as a wartime foe. Perhaps his best-known travel memoir, “The Inland Sea” (1971), was the basis of a documentary shown on PBS in 1991.
“I remain in a state of surprise, and this leads to heightened interest and hence perception,” Mr. Richie wrote in his diary in 1947, describing the thrill with living abroad that he would keep his entire life. “Like a child with a puzzle, I am forever putting pieces together and saying: Of course.”
Mr. Richie made his biggest mark in his writings on Japanese cinema. In 1959, he and the critic Joseph L. Anderson published “The Japanese Film: Art and Industry,” which many film studies experts regard as the first comprehensive English-language book on Japanese movies.
But Mr. Richie made his biggest mark in his writings on Japanese cinema, and particularly its great postwar directors.
In his memoir, “The Japan Journals, 1947-2004,” Mr. Richie recounted how in the late 1940s he paid his first visit to a Japanese studio, where he met a director in a white floppy hat and “someone I guessed was a star” wearing “a loose Hawaii-shirt.” Thus began Mr. Richie’s enduring acquaintance with two of the giants of Japanese cinema, the director Akiro Kurosawa and the actor Toshiro Mifune.
In 1959, he and Joseph Anderson published what is regarded by film studies experts as the first English-language book on Japanese movies, “The Japanese Film: Art and Industry.” In his memoir, he recounted how in the late 1940s he paid his first visit to a Japanese studio, where he met a director in a white floppy hat and “someone I guessed was a star ... in a loose Hawaii-shirt.” Thus began Mr. Richie’s lifelong acquaintance with two of the giants of Japanese cinema, Mr. Kurosawa and the actor Toshiro Mifune.
Mr. Richie went on to write several books on Mr. Kurosawa and his films, including the 1950 samurai mystery “Rashomon,” whose innovative shifting of perspective among characters won the director global renown. (Mr. Richie wrote English subtitles for three of Mr. Kurosawa’s films.)
Mr. Richie went on to write several books on Mr. Kurosawa, who won an Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 1989, and on his films, including the 1950 samurai mystery “Rashomon,” whose innovative shifting of perspective among characters won it global renown. Mr. Richie later proclaimed it “the best-known Japanese film ever made.” He also wrote English subtitles for three of Mr. Kurosawa’s films, including “Kagemusha” (1980).
Mr. Richie also drew attention to another brilliant Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu, whose sparse and subtle handling of themes like family, as in “Tokyo Story” (1953), influenced Western directors, including Wim Wenders.
Mr. Richie also drew attention to another brilliant Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu, whose sparse and subtle handling of themes like family in “Tokyo Story” (1953) influenced Western directors like Wim Wenders, according to Aaron Gerow, a professor of Japanese cinema at Yale University.
“Donald Richie was the one to get these films shown abroad,” said Aaron Gerow, a professor of Japanese cinema at Yale. “He was the first gatekeeper of Japanese film for the English-language world.”
“Donald Richie was the one to get these films shown abroad,” Mr. Gerow said. “He was the first gatekeeper of Japanese film for the English-language world.”
Mr. Richie met and wrote about many of the more colorful figures of postwar Japan, among them the novelist Yukio Mishima, who killed himself by ritual disembowelment in 1970. Mr. Richie struggled to make sense of the suicide, often interpreted here as an effort to draw attention to the nation’s loss of martial spirit, and expressed mild exasperation with Mr. Mishima’s widow for seeking to hide her husband’s embrace of homosexuality.
During his decades in Japan, Mr. Richie met and wrote about many of the more colorful figures in Japan’s postwar intellectual and artistic scene. He seemed to be particularly drawn to Yukio Mishima, the novelist who killed himself by ritual disembowelment in 1970. Mr. Richie struggled to make sense of the suicide, often interpreted here as an effort to draw attention to the nation’s loss of martial spirit, and expressed mild exasperation with Mr. Mishima’s widow for seeking to hide her late husband’s well-known embrace of homosexuality.
Mr. Richie came to bemoan the changes that transformed Japan from the mostly agrarian country he found in the 1940s into an industrialized landscape of unrestrained public works and American-style commercial development.
Openly bisexual, Mr. Richie also wrote frankly about his lovers both male and female, saying Japan’s greater tolerance of homosexuality in the 1940s compared to the United States was one reason he returned after graduating from Columbia University in 1953. He lived most of his life alone, though he was briefly married to Mary Richie, an American writer.
Still, Mr. Richie seemed to have a complex view of the nation where he spent most of his life. In his writings, he did not shy from painting a less-than-rosy picture of its xenophobic society. Yet, he also found much to praise, particularly the sense of balance and subtlety apparent in traditional Japanese arts.
“Donald had a sensibility that was not nurtured where he grew up,” said his friend Mr. Blasdel, artistic director of Tokyo’s International House. “He was warm but also kept his distance, even in his personal relationships. This gives his writing a sense of passionately caring, but also of objectivity and truthfulness.”
Indeed, some of Mr. Richie’s most poignant writings describe his status as an American expatriate in a nation that keeps outsiders at a distance. He said he never sought to become a Japanese citizen, but instead seemed to revel in his position on the margins of Japanese society, which he wrote offered him far greater personal freedom than he could have had back in Ohio.
“I may have rejected the U.S.A. where I was born,” Mr. Richie wrote in his memoir, “The Japan Journals, 1947-2004,” “but I did not decide to be Japanese. That is an impossible decision since the Japanese prevent it. Rather, I decided to decorate Limbo and become a citizen of this most attractive, intensely democratic republic.”
Mr. Richie lamented the changes he saw transforming the nation. In books like “The Inland Sea,” Mr. Richie bemoaned the passing of the quaint, agrarian country that he found in the 1940s, the victim of decades of unrestrained public works and American-style commercial redevelopment.
“It was the most beautiful country I’d ever seen in my life,” he wrote in 1992, “and now it’s just about the ugliest.”
“It was the most beautiful country I’d ever seen in my life,” he wrote in 1992, “and now it’s just about the ugliest.”
Still, he expressed few regrets about his self-imposed exile. In one of the last entries in “The Japan Journals,” he likened himself to Rip Van Winkle because he missed out on the last half-century of popular culture and events back in the United States.
Donald Richie was born in Lima, Ohio, on April 17, 1924, and lived most of his life alone, though he was briefly married to Mary Richie, an American writer.
“I managed to sleep through my generation,” he wrote. “By coming to this magical land where everything looks much the same but acts sometimes otherwise.”
“Donald had a sensibility that was not nurtured where he grew up,” said his friend Mr. Blasdel, artistic director of Tokyo’s International House. “He was warm but also kept his distance, even in his personal relationships. This gives his writing a sense of passionately caring, but also of objectivity and truthfulness.”
But where Rip Van Winkle felt loss at his separation, Mr. Richie concluded, “I feel gain.”
Mr. Richie said he never sought to become a Japanese citizen, but instead seemed to revel in his position on the margins of Japanese society, which, he wrote, offered him far greater personal freedom than he could have had back in Ohio.
“I may have rejected the U.S.A. where I was born,” Mr. Richie wrote in his memoir, “but I did not decide to be Japanese. That is an impossible decision, since the Japanese prevent it. Rather, I decided to decorate Limbo and become a citizen of this most attractive, intensely democratic republic.”
