In this scintillating book, Ian Buruma peels away the myths that surround Japanese culture. With piercing analysis of cinema, theatre, television, art, and legend, he shows the Japanese both 'as they imagine themselves to be, and as they would like themselves to be.' A Japanese Mirror examines samurai and gangsters, transvestites, and goddesses to paint an eloquent picture of life in Japan. This is a country long shrouded in enigma and in his compelling book, Buruma reveals a culture rich in with poetry, beauty, and wonder.
"Buruma's informed and perceptive study not only tells us a good deal about the matriarchs, warriors and geishas, whores and hoodlums of Japanese fact and fiction, but also identifies the deeply rooted erotic, violent and sadomasochistic fantasies which lie just beneath the surface of an exceptionally ordered society."
Evening Standard
"A brilliantly funny book about the bizarre pop-culture phenomena of modern Japan, from its absurdly violent mass-circulation porno-comics to its sentimental movies about gangsters and vagabonds."
New York Times
"Audacious, compelling and entirely readable... A Japanese Mirror, with its rich and sexy anecdotage, is an engaging, at times disturbing read, not least because its author, having derived his framework from the gods, knows when to pull the screen."
