The Lady And The Monk: Four Seasons In Kyoto (1992) - Plot & Excerpts
it's generally understood in Japan-specialist circles that books on Japan, and indeed Japanese authored fiction, generally fall into two categories: the books on the illusion of Japan (1) or the books on the gritty reality (2). it's considered a mark of taste to prefer the latter; you are 'daring,' 'hard,' 'tough,' perhaps 'manic,' 'mean,' 'cool,' or 'strict' to find, review, read, enjoy the underbelly stories; the stories about criminals, drug-use, beatings, the underclass, the poor, the weak, rather than "the beautiful cherry blossoms of Japan, and how they swirled around me as I navigated the mists climbing the hill to the whoppermill castle, upon which I spied the first glint of an autumn approaching, samurai, sumo, geisha, My Japan." (bwahahahah) the difference exists as well for Japanese writers on Japan: Ryu versus Haruki Murakami, Mishima Yukio vs. Banana Yoshimoto, Tanizaki and Dazai and to some degree Soseki versus a thousand lesser known writers who time and historical opinion have confined, duly, to the dustbin.Conde Nast's printed review at the beginning of Lady and Monk seems to capture Pico Iyer's achievement best:Iyers get as deep into the Japanese soul as a perceptive foreigner can...a love story unique in the annals of travel writing.for what Iyer is attempting--the cherry blossoms and sweeping autumn leaves swirling around temples and Zen contemplation of Kyoto, as I begin to meet more and more regularly with a thirty-year old married woman who seems to be afraid to unfold her wings and let fly--he has achieved all that is possible for this task. but since he belongs to the school (1) of Japan, the elevation of the illusion, the obsession with the love side of the love-power equation, his work is necessarily limited, and he fails to excite a genuine breakthrough in J-literature, even as he undoubtedly manages to charm ten of thousands of readers and create a boy's romance story.Iyer's book seems to move from an Indian's philosophical approach to a British realist over the course of the travelogue, but while his clear lucid prose invites entry into his more read 'Video Nights in Katmandu,' it's also clear that his talent does not lie in the island country. the work deserves its repute as a solid piece of craftsmanship and a welcome addition to J-lit, but it is not groundbreaking and it is not bold. the clash between Indian upbringing, Oxonian manners, California in-knowledge, and the setting of Japanese austerity is at times lyrical, but there's no especial reason to make this a book you pack into a steamer case when you switch countries--it's fine to know it exists in public libraries across the developed countries, but never something to invest in terms of the weight-meaning tradeoff when you're on rails or carrying a rucksack.earns points for skill of writing, for Iyer's extremely well-read background and philosophical readings at Oxford (by which we gain some of the Derrida-post-structuralist tradeoff against Japan's empire of no-meaning-- Barthes was it?), wins points that Iyer knows his limits and doesn't go past, but belongs to the category of foreigner who one generaly leaves to their own take. a pretty work.These sunny, baffling sentiments were everywhere in Japan--on T-shirts, carrier bags, and photo albums--rhyming, in their way, with the relentlessly chirpy voices that serenaded one on elevators, buses, and trains; it did not take a Roland Barthes to identify Japan as an Empire of Signs. These snippets of nonsense poetry were also, of course, the first and easiest target most foreigners in Japan, since they were often almost the only signs in English, and absurd: creamers called Creep, Noise snacks that came in different colors, pet cases known as Effem...Every newly arrived foreigner could become an instant sociologist...- Iyer, p. 220A bold deconstruction, but as about as a non-speaker can get into interpreting the Japanese world. And yet Iyer married a Japanese woman, so who can plumb the mysteries of this 200 IQ double Harvard- Oxford grad and world traveler? Lady and the Monk is redeemed, partially, by musings on both obscure and well-known Zen thinkers, existentialists, Jewish New York philosophists and -ers, and his characterization of the "in-out" cycle of airport-driven life is spot on, but it's hard to escape the feeling that he would have benefited from more language acquisition before his foray, and it's not clear Iyer really "gets" the heart of the story he attempted. plus points: lucid prose, some ability to minimalism where appropriate, emotionally fine-tuned scenes; negative: a tourist's eye superficial look at Japan, little appreciation of the inside dynamic.14 March 2013what a difference a month makes. reading Lady and the Monk LATM right next to Speed Tribes, I kept noticing how much Iyer was a) superficial b) non-speaker c) uncool d) a fuzzy focus romanticism liar. well, all those judgments may still hold true. but I've liberalized.maybe we do need these gossamer-spinners, these illusionists and crafters. in a world of so much harshness, pollution, poison, factory wasteland, somebody creates a myth about japan, and then starts to believe it?and Iyer gets points because he saw the edge of religious interest that presaged Japan; whereas Crichton and Clancy in 1991 had entirely different takes on the country?i guess I will write more later, but suffice to say, I accept a 4/5 rating. Iyer is a myth-weaver, and these judments may still hold true... but that is what it is.
Extremely well written but one that has been educated so well like Pico and travels so much has the greatest luck of writing such and awesome book. It is very colorful and detail and anyone interested in Zen and Japan will love this book. I came to this book by a good-friend giving it to me. The girl in the story Sachiko is a stay at home Mom with two kids, and the husband is a good man but hardly available. The lady is always doing house-chores and bringing the kids around, and never stepped out of her little world like many Japanese wives, but hopefully that will slowly change. When I first started reading the book I read VHS and I noticed it wasn't in the era of today must have been written in the late 80's, published in 91. The girl Sachiko just falls head over heels to this guy and it was very strange and I think because of her enclosure. I really don't have to have scenes of love but you will never find, one one kiss, them maybe because the girl is so needy. Maybe there was more in real life the writer did not put in because the girl was just too much, the opposite of American girls. He found her in a Zen Temple and there is plenty of writing on the subject that any Zen lover will enjoy. The book is written lots with dialogues that a Japanese would use to a foreigner if they were not very well in English and he did the same to her in Japanese, there were confusion many times what they meant. Mainly the book is extremely poetical and I stopped reading most other books to finish it. At the end it talks of an American baseball champ playing in a Japanese team and he went to take care of his ill son in San Francisco and was fired. Another American baseball champ was making breakfast for his son in Japan while the women was sleeping and the photographer took the picture and he was fired from the team. It is a gorgeous place with incredible good things about it, but women are treated not good at all. The whole society is expected to behave a certain way and one can't change the norm created by men on the top. I don't know if it has changed much since the book was written. There are lots of scenes with nightclubs that are very interesting, another world. It is a book because of the poetical way and subject of Zen I would reread in the future. Pico Iyer said it was his favorite book, love to come across more like these in other Eastern countries, travelogue/romance.
What do You think about The Lady And The Monk: Four Seasons In Kyoto (1992)?
I may be biased because I am actually interested in living in Japan at some point, but I feel like Pico Iyer's The Lady and the Monk is a mostly forgotten classic in the vein of travel writing. I had never even heard of it before chancing across it while perusing writings about Japan at Powell's. I picked it up because I had just applied for a teaching position in Japan (which I was subsequently denied) and wanted to read different accounts of life over there. What I discovered was a combination of memoir, travel essay, philosophical treatise, and flat-out romance novel that left me stunned by its insight, tenderness, and sheer beauty. Chronicling a year he spent living in Kyoto, Iyer patterns his book after the seasons, each of which takes on particular cultural and physical resonance in Japan. His mood and understanding of the Japanese changes with the seasons as well, along with his slowly developing love affair with a beautiful, vivacious, fascinatingly contradictory woman named Sachiko. He peppers all this with a growing knowledge of Zen Buddhism, as well as excerpts from, and his own critical writings on, Japanese poetry and literature. The way he synthesizes it all to explain the impact the country and people has had on his own growth and awareness is profoundly interesting and moving. Additionally, the India-born, Oxford-educated Iyer is a flat-out sensational writer, capturing the simultaneously austere and lush beauty of Japan with warm, colorful details. As far as travel writing goes, Lady and the Monk has it all: It's a tender, lovely homage to a people and their landscape; it's a deeply empathetic, carefully wrought observation of a culture vastly different from our own; and it's a steamy, simmering love story that affects you like a Victorian novel might, where every strand of hair that brushes Iyer's arm sends shivers down your spine, and a simple kiss feels like fireworks in the sky.
—Justin
There is lucidity in Iyer's writing that flows with onset of autumn in Kyoto. At places the prose is poetic and draws you in. Iyer hasn't held back his perception of the place and his philosophy. His self deprecation cannot be pitied for long as it morphs to thinly veiled racism. Its a journey where his thought process changes progressively as Japan stops being an illusion.To an extent this non-fiction further motivated me to check out Japan and the beauty it has to offer. Yes, Iyer goes for a cliched perspective of the place and its people but isn't that sometimes nice to have an optimistic view of a beautiful country? Like every other country Japan has its own set of issues and problems but why ignore all the beauty it has to offer and concentrate on everything that's going wrong.Having lived as an outsider in Japan, I cannot understand why there is a gaping hole in Iyer's view of the places he visited. He doesn't talk about culture or its history which Japanese (or any one for that matter) are very proud off. This lack of attention to things around him let me down the most. This isn't west meet east stuff. Its east meets far east. Iyer's own conflict in his personal philosophy further gets muddied when he walks the lanes of Kyoto. It's good book and Iyer writes very well. But having visited Japan, it changed my perspective of the book.
—Sookie
It's more like 2.5 stars. So this is the first time I’ve read a novel by Pico Iyer. Many years ago I read his short but insightful essay “Why we travel” and I’ve always wanted to read one of his novels since then. As far as his writing goes, this novel did not disappoint. He’s the “stop and smell the roses” type of writer, where if you have the patience to read carefully and sometimes more than once, you can easily get lost in a sense of wonder and curiosity because of his ability to pack in so much vividry (?) and find and describe beauty in the mundane.Overall though, it turned out to be too slow paced for me. This book was written 20 years ago and it shows. There’s no cell phone communication, no hashtagging etc. I think some of his observations about Japan’s culture and other things are outdated as well. I asked my Japanese friend about something in the book, about a certain color having a certain meaning, and she reacted by saying, “What book are you reading?? It’s wrong!” I did like how he pointed out the various responses of foreigners – his included - when they encounter and clash with Japan’s culture. However I didn’t care much for the romantic/friendship development part of the book. But, it's nice to know he eventually married her later.
—Jamie
