Donald Richie has been observing and writing about Japan from the moment he arrived on New Year's Eve, 1946. Detailing his life, his attachments, and his ideas on matters high and low, The Japan Journals is a record of both a nation and an evolving expatriate sensibility. A friend of the famous-Kawabata, D. T. Suzuki, Mishima, Takemitsu, Tamasaburo to name a few-Richie was also given to ardors not tolerated in his own country but not forbidden in Japan. As Japan modernizes and as the author ages, Richie's tone grows elegiac, and The Japan Journals becomes an overwhelmingly poignant experience of a complicated life well lived and captivatingly told.

Donald Richie (1924–), the eminent film historian, novelist and essayist, still lives in Tokyo.