Fate was smiling on me last weekend at the library's Monster Book Sale. I was discouraged and just about to leave when I spotted Fosco Maraini's 1959 classic Meeting With Japan (Ore Giapponesi). Not that I had any idea it was a classic; I'd never heard of this book or its esteemed author-photographer before. But it was about Japan, it was only two bucks, and it had some nice old photos from the 1940s and 1950s.
This book is an absolute delight. The writing is lyrical. The insights, lucid. It's got me thinking a mile a minute. What an unexpected treasure! This is one of the best books I've ever read on Japan, even though (or perhaps because) it was written almost fifty years ago.
I have hardly begun to digest it, but I can't encourage you enough to buy this book if you can find it. Expect to see a series of quotes posted and discussed here in the next few months.
I'm still trying to piece together information on Fosco Mariani. So far I found a short bio , at the Harvill Press, publishers of his book Secret Tibet.
I also found the following background information at Kyoto Mitate among the documents for the 1995 ISSK Symposium (International Society to Save Kyoto's Historic Environment).
The Boat to Kobe (La Nave per Kobe).In conjuction with the symposium, from the 2nd to the 12th October, there is an exhition of photographs of Kyoto, mostly taken in the early fifties, by Fosco Maraini. Maraini is not just a gifted photographer, he is in fact one of the most respected European scholars on things Japanese. (He was Professor of Japanese Language and Literature at the University of Florence, and since 1983 has served as the President of the Italian Association for Japanese Studies.) Born in Florence of an Italian father (the sculptor Antonio Maraini) and an English mother (the writer Yoi Crosse), he is not merely a citizen of Europe, but is regarded as a citizen of the world... (he wrote) "It was a great day when I managed to visit Tibet with Professor Tucci in 1937. And a greater day still when I managed to secure a scholarship to go to Japan for two years (which turned out to be seven) in 1938" (The Road to the East, Toyota, 1989, p. 27).
Very early in his life, Maraini felt that Europe was too limited for his cultural interests and he passionatedly studied other civilizations, above all the Asian ones and especially Japan, where Kyoto was his place of election. His extensive writings on Japan, include both highly specialized anthropological studies of the Ainu culture (his "Iku-bashui degli Ainu" was published in Tokyo in 1942) and very popular books, written in a captivating style, like "Ore Giaponnesi" (1956) which was translated into many languages (the English translation, "Meeting with Japan", was published in 1958). This last book brought Japan and Kyoto (to which almost two hundred pages are devoted) nearer to the mind and to the heart of a great number of people in the world. It is therefore not by chance that the ISSK that Maraini has been named the first honorary president of the ISSK.
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens
September 19, 2002
Comments
Having finished the two books I was immersed in for some months, Chiyo-ni and Tale of Murasaki, I have been at a loss as to what to embrace next. Meeting with Japan sounds perfect, though I expect I won't have the good fortune to find an old copy. The time period you describe when the author was doing his studies of Japan and in particular of Kyoto brought to mind an author I have mentioned to you before, Kawabata Yasunari. Kawabata is famous for writing stories of lament for the Japan that he saw disappearing before his eyes. He eventually committed suicide, in the 70's I think. One of his shorter novellas is a story calle Izu no Odori, or Izu Dancer. I've read it again and again. Nothing much happens, but in the story of a university student travelling in the mountains and the young apprentice country geisha he meets, there is such sad beauty. I'll add a bit more. One rainy day in Beppu, I nonchalantly turned on the small black and white T.V.someone had given me and caught an old movie on the screen. It captivated me at once. As the picture on the old T.V. materialized, a close up of a face of extraordinary sensitivity and beauty appeared, the male university student, and then a scene of the young woman, bedraggled and lovley, clad in kimono and geta, turning away from him and navigating her way through puddles while the sky slashed them both. It turned out to be a dramatization of Izu no Odori. I wish I could remember the name of the movie star who played the geisha. But what hopes would I have of finding it again...
Comment by: jbl. Posted September 20, 2002 11:22 AM.
Silly me. The book is out of print but Amazon and its independent sellers have numerous copies. Did yours have a dust jacket? jbl
Comment by: jbl. Posted September 20, 2002 11:38 AM.
You are so lucky to have found that copy of Meeting with Japan. I just finished reading it and was wondering whether it was available anywhere. The photographs are exquisite and of a print quality no longer seen in books today. Treasure your find! There's a lot about Maraini on the web. I'm happy to have found this site. B.
Comment by: B. Zimmerman. Posted September 8, 2003 02:55 PM.
I have a number of old books on Japan and was going to take them to a local second hand bookstore. One is "Meeting with Japan." Is it of significant "worth" today?
I just did a search on Amazon and they have eight copies for under $5.00. It's not a collector's item or anything. But it is a really good read. -- M. Stevens
Comment by: Lily. Posted September 22, 2003 12:04 PM.
Thanks, M. Stevens. I checked with Amazon before I posted and nothing came up for me. Funny. I used to have dozens of books on Japan but gave most of them away to two local schools. "Meeting" is one that I kept because I loved it so much. I agree with you about its merits. However, I'm attempting to 'clear my life" (of stuff) as I become mired in my Medicare years.
Comment by: Lily. Posted September 23, 2003 11:25 PM.
I met Fosco a few years back at Columbia U., it was a dinner in his honor kicking off a touring show of his work. I am a photographer also, at the time, I was working with a pair of antiquities photographers who had produced a traveling retrospective, published a collection of his work and produced a short documentary film celebrating his extraordinary life. The book titled "Maraini" (2000 by Yoost Efferts) contained about 100 high quality reproductions of some of his most monumental works spanning his life's experiences; Tibet, Japan, the unpublished Nostro Sud, India, & New York City. If Japan is your interest, Fosco produced two documentaries, on the Anu (bear ceremony) and the other on the Ama (pearl divers).
Comment by: mik. Posted February 5, 2004 10:19 PM.
I was a seventeen year old U.S. Navy sailor in spring of 52 when I arrived aboard a troop ship to Yokohama, bound for Korea. At eighteen Years old I was sent to the Yokosuka, Japan Naval Base for duty. The next three years I was friends with a young Japanese girl. Yes, she was a business woman. But first she was a person. She laughed she loved she cried.She had a mother, a father, sisters. I knew them all. She was a young victim of the times as was I.
I find the author's judgement of we young occupiers and the young Japanese citizens we were associated with to be less than honest.
Otherwise it is a book which I treasure. Do not pass it up.
Comment by: Ed Gard. Posted March 11, 2004 04:01 PM.
The late Prof. Maraini's Meeting with Japan reminds me of many thing that Japan has lost in the 1970s and after. I wrote some notes on my accidental meeting with Prof. Maraini to express my condolences on him. http://www.kt.rim.or.jp/~tyamamot/betterorworse.html#idx18
Comment by: Taro Yamamoto. Posted January 29, 2005 08:50 PM.
Am reading it now. http://vark.blogspot.com/2007/05/what-ive-been-reading-vignettes-of.html Glad to learn, here, of the tibet book and the documentaries. I am probably too lazy to track these down.
Comment by: arbitraryaardvark. Posted May 16, 2007 06:28 PM.
Share Your Thoughts
Meeting With Japan.
Fosco Maraini.