A strange little volume. It is a Japanese view (words and pictures) of the American Ivy League campuses, particularly campus "fashions," of the early 1960's. For most people now, this is a world as distant in time as it was a culture distant in space to the authors. As a result, the explanatory commentary is strangely resonant. I borrowed a copy from the library, and unless you are a real aficionado, I suggest you do the same. This book is best read AFTER seeing The Social Network, a movie which caused me to view Harvard and the Ivy League through the lens of pants-wetting fear. Our friendly Japanese author takes us through a guide of American Ivy League schools, comparing and contrasting his own culture's pressure on the young to study hard to get into Japan's top campuses.As an Australian looking into this book, I find a lot of things mentioning Ivy League Uni culture a bit baffling, if not terrifying. The author through his Japanese cultural background seems to be under the impression that the most studious graduates of Ivy League schools will become world leaders. Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't - or maybe at the time he just didn't see Mark Zuckerberg as existing as a new kind of "world leader".I find a lot of campus culture overseas in America pants-soilingly horrifying, particularly Hazing and other Fraternity rituals. But none of that seems to have been captured here.Maybe, the Japanese photographer who took these photographs paid more attention to the students who worked hard to have a good image and to keep up appearances as a worthy student who deserved his degree at a prestigious academy. From what I understand from that The Social Network movie, the poor Japanese author may have been a bit naive about what he saw versus the unfortunate reality of modern Ivy League culture - cheating in exams and assignments is more prevalent now than it was before the internet, and the whole Masters of the Universe type ideology of The Ivy League utterly frightens me. It is as if America is expected to draw its greatest leaders from a privileged few white males who were born into the right families and the right money.The author seems to have mistaken the hard work ethic of Japan as something other countries like the USA would replicate among their own colleges. I sure hope I'm not as wrong about my previous view of what college was as I think.
What do You think about Take Ivy (2010)?
Funny text (translated from Japanese) and pretty cool pictures make this a fun book to flip through.
—ria
I want a sequel which includes the fashion of ivy girls!
—Maryzmc
A gorgeous look at classic Ivy style for men.
—Charlie
Fun book - made better by the clunky English.
—pccheer99
