A GAIJIN’S GUIDE TO JAPAN
An alternative look at Japanese life, history and culture
Ben Stevens
The Friday Project
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published by The Friday Project in 2009
Ben Stevens asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9781906321215
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007347421
Version: 2016-09-22
for Kazuyo
Table of Contents
In 1853, a Reverend Samuel Wells Williams—in Japan to act as translator to Commodore Matthew Perry (See Black Ships, The)—declared the Land of the Rising Sun to be ‘…the most lewd of all the heathen nations I have seen’.
As it transpired, however, the good Reverend was a bit of a dork who couldn’t even speak Japanese all that well, so we shouldn’t take his opinion too seriously. He was merely distressed that women laboured bare-breasted in the paddy fields—a fact which, if he’d lightened up a little, may well have actually put a smile on the miserable old coot’s face.
Since then, a host of academics and other experts on Japanese history, language, culture and customs have pondered such important questions as: Why did nearly every Japanese woman under the age of thirty go nuts over David Beckham during and after the 2002 World Cup? Why will saying ‘Chin-chin!’ at a Japanese drinking party result only in stony stares and an awkward silence? And is it really true that many samurai warriors liked—in their spare time—to get ‘down and dirty’ with one another?
Here, finally, are explanations concerning these and many other weighty
