Ian Buruma’s “A Tokyo Romance”

Listen 36:00

 

New York Review of Books’ editor IAN BURUMA, knew almost nothing about Japan when he arrived in Tokyo in 1975. Trading his upper-middle class childhood of garden sprinklers, bridge parties, and tennis for adventures in a city of neon lights, Japanese pop and cabarets, exposed him to a different culture. Through his adventures of avant-garde theater, carnival acts and fashion shoots, and hanging out on sets with Japanese film director, Akira Kurosawa, Buruma made a radical transformation. In this hour, Marty talks to Buruma about his memoir, A Tokyo Romance, and how he reinvented himself in Japan.

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