Review | Kyoto in the 1970s, and Japanese traditional culture and hedonism collide for a young American. Is Steve Alpert’s writing fiction or memoir?
- For American student Don Ascher, Kyoto is the stage for odd and hilarious episodes, including flirtations with geisha and burning down a traditional teahouse
- Playfully diverting and full of descriptions of a place for which its author clearly feels affection, Kyoto Stories may be fiction or memoir. Does it matter?
Before the world became homogeneous and when there were still places to be discovered – places where “they” didn’t look or sound like “us” – an open-minded, possibly somewhat gullible gaijin – foreigner – fetching up in Japan could be sure of adventure, escapades, even a few scrapes.
In a high-end hostess bar, Ascher-san is introduced as someone “very interested in traditional Japan”, which can be read as a backhanded compliment from his expensively attired, relatively wealthy escort – who has talked Ascher into an evening of sizing up her husband’s mistress, a genuine Gion geisha.
Dig or not, it doesn’t register with Ascher, who is dazzled by the foreigners-only “stately old house” he is lucky to have moved into; in particular by traditional pottery; and by the abstract rules that govern Japanese society and allow the likes of the slightly shady, word-of-mouth shabu-shabu Japanese hotpot restaurant in which he works part time to flourish.
Ascher, however, isn’t completely wet behind the ears. He considers the excessive pomp of the Japanese tea ceremony to be a gimmick for tourists and a hoax visited on the likes of his flaky American girlfriend, Pattie, who is studying the Way of Tea under the auspices of a “traditional, commercial and […] spiritual purveyor of Japanese culture”.