Donald Richie

Donald Richie in February 2009

For the U.S. Senate historian, see Donald A. Ritchie.

Donald Richie (born 17 April 1924, Lima, Ohio) is an American-born author who has written about the Japanese people and Japanese cinema. Although he considers himself only a writer,^[1] Richie has directed many experimental films, the first when he was 17.^[2] Although Richie speaks Japanese fluently, he can neither read nor write it. ^[3]

Biography

During World War II, he served aboard Liberty ships as a purser and medical officer. By then he had already published his first work, "Tumblebugs" (1942), a short story.^[4]

In 1947, Richie first visited Japan with the American occupation force, a job he saw as an opportunity to escape from Lima, Ohio. He first worked as a typist, and then as a civilian staff writer for the Pacific Stars and Stripes. While in Tokyo, he became fascinated with Japanese culture, particularly Japanese cinema. He was soon writing movie reviews in the Stars and Stripes. In 1948 he met Kashiko Kawakita who introduced him to Yasujiro Ozu. During their long friendship, Richie and Kawakita collaborated closely in promoting Japanese film in the West.^[5]

After returning to the United States, he enrolled at Columbia University's School of General Studies in 1949, and received his Bachelor's Degree in English in 1953. Richie then returned to Japan as film critic for the The Japan Times and spent much of the second half of the twentieth century living there. In 1959, he published his first book, The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, coauthored with Joseph Anderson. In this work, the authors gave the first English language account of Japanese film. Richie served as Curator of Film at the New York Museum of Modern Art from 1969 to 1972. In 1988, he was invited to become the first guest director at the Telluride Film Festival.

Among his most noted works on Japan are The Inland Sea, a travel classic, and Public People, Private People, a look at some of Japan's most significant and most mundane people. He has compiled two collections of essays on Japan: A Lateral View and Partial Views. A collection of his writings has been published to commemorate fifty years of writing about Japan: The Donald Richie Reader. The Japan Journals: 1947-2004 consists of extended excerpts from his diaries.

In 1991, filmmakers Lucille Carra and Brian Cotnoir produced a film version of The Inland Sea, which Richie narrated. Produced by Travelfilm Company, the film won numerous awards, including Best Documentary at the Hawaii International Film Festival (1991) and the Earthwatch Film Award. It screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992.^[6]

Author Tom Wolfe describes Richie as: "the Lafcadio Hearn of our time, a subtle, stylish, and deceptively lucid medium between two cultures that confuse one another: the Japanese and the American."^[7]

Japanese cinema

Richie's most widely recognized accomplishment has been his analysis of Japanese cinema. From his first published book, Richie has revised not only the library of films he discusses, but the way he analyzes them. With each subsequent book, he has focused less on film theory and more on the conditions in which the films were made. One thing that has emerged in his works is an emphasis on the "presentational" nature of Japan's cinema, in contrast to the "representational" films of the West. His book, A Hundred Years Of Japanese Film includes a helpful guide to the availability of the films on home video and DVD mentioned in the main text. In the foreword to this book, Paul Schrader says: "Whatever we in the West know about Japanese film, and how we know it, we most likely owe to Donald Richie." Richie also has written analyses of two of Japan's best known filmmakers: Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa.

Richie has written the English subtitles for Akira Kurosawa's films Kagemusha (1980) and Dreams (1990)^[8].

In the 21st century, Richie has become noted for his erudite audio commentaries for The Criterion Collection on DVDs of various classic Japanese films, notably those of Ozu (A Story of Floating Weeds,Early Summer), Mikio Naruse (When a Woman Ascends the Stairs), and Kurosawa (Drunken Angel,Rashomon,The Lower Depths,and The Bad Sleep Well), among others.

Books by Donald Richie

• Botandoro: Stories, Fables, Parables and Allegories: A Miscellany (paperback), Printed Matter Press; 2008; ISBN 978-1-933606-16-3
• Travels in the East (paperback). Stone Bridge Press. 2007. ISBN 978-1933330617. 
• A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics (paperback). Stone Bridge Press. 2007. ISBN 978-1933330235. 
• Japanese Portraits: Pictures of Different People (Tuttle Classics of Japanese Literature) (paperback). Tuttle Publishing. 2006. ISBN 978-0804837729. 
• Tokyo Nights (paperback). Printed Matter Press; 2005; ISBN 1933606002
• A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History, with a Selective Guide to DVDs and Videos (paperback). Kodansha International. 2005. ISBN 978-4770029959. 
• The Japan Journals: 1947-2004 (paperback). Stone Bridge Press. 2005. ISBN 978-1880656976. 
• A View from the Chuo Line and Other Stories (paperback), Printed Matter Press, 2004, SBN 4900178276
• Japanese Literature Reviewed (hardcover). ICG Muse; 2003; ISBN 4925080784
• With Roy Garner. The Image Factory: Fads and Fashions in Japan (paperback). Reaktion Books; 2003; ISBN 1861891539
• The Inland Sea (paperback). Stone Bridge Press. 2002. ISBN 978-1880656693. 
• The Donald Richie Reader: 50 Years of Writing on Japan (paperback). Stone Bridge Press. 2001. ISBN 978-1880656617. 
• Tokyo: A View of the City (paperback). Reaktion Books; 1999; ISBN 1861890346
• Memoirs of the Warrior Kumagai: A Historical Novel (hardcover). Tuttle Publishing; 1999; ISBN 0804821267
• The Films of Akira Kurosawa, Third Edition, Expanded and Updated (paperback). University of California Pres. 1999. ISBN 978-0520220379. 
• Tokyo (paperback). Reaktion Books. 1999. ISBN 978-1861890344. 
• Partial Views: Essays on Contemporary Japan (paperback). Japan Times; 1995; ISBN 4789008010
• The Temples of Kyoto (hardback). Tuttle Publishing; 1995; ISBN 0804820325
• The Inland Sea (paperback). Kodansha International; 1993; ISBN 4770017510
• A Lateral View: Essays on Culture and Style in Contemporary Japan (paperback). Stone Bridge Press. 1992. ISBN 978-0962813740. 
• Japanese Cinema: An Introduction (hardcover). Oxford University Press; 1990; ISBN 0195849507
• Japanese Cinema: Film Style and National Character (paperback). Oxford University Press; 1990; ISBN 0195849507
• Introducing Japan (hardcover). Kodansha International; 1987; ISBN 0870118331
• Introducing Tokyo (hardcover). Kodansha Inc; 1987; ISBN 0870118064
• Focus on Rashomon (hardcover). Rutgers University Press; 1987; ISBN 0137529805
• Different People: Pictures of Some Japanese (hardcover). Kodansha Inc; 1987; ISBN 087011820x
• A Taste Of Japan (hardcover). 1985. Kodansha Intl. Ltd.. 
• Zen Inklings: Some Stories, Fables, Parables, and Sermons (Buddhism & Eastern Philosophy) (Paperback) with prints by the author. Weatherhill, 1982. Without prints: 1982. ISBN 78-0834802308
• With Ian Buruma (photos) (1980). The Japanese Tattoo (hardcover). Weatherhill. 
• Ozu: His Life and Films (paperback). University of California Press. 1977. ISBN 978-0520032774. 
• George Stevens: An American Romantic. New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1970.
• Companions of the Holiday (hardcover). Weatherhill; 1968; ISBN 1299583105
• Erotic Gods Phallicism in Japan (slipcase). Shufushinsha; 1966; ISBN 1141447436
• The masters’ book of Ikebana: background and principles of Japanese flower arrangement, edited by Donald Richie & Meredith Weatherby; with lessons by the masters of Japan’s three foremost schools: (hardcover). Bijutsu Shuppansha. 1966. 
• The Japanese Movie. An Illustrated History (hardcover). Kodansha Ltd; 1965; ISBN 1141450038
• Japanese Movies. Japan Travel Bureau, 1961
• With Joseph L. Anderson. The Japanese Film: Art and Industry (paperback). Princeton University Press; 1959, revised 1983; ISBN 0691007926
• Eight American Authors. Kenkyusha. 1956. 
• This Scorching Earth. Charles E. Tuttle. 1956. 
• With Watanabe Miyoko. Six Kabuki Plays (paperback). Hokuseido Press; 1953; ISBN 1299157548
• Essays in Contemporary American Literature, Drama and Cinema (in Japanese). Hayakawa Shobo. 1950. 
• The Honorable Visitors. Charles E Tuttle; 1949; ISBN 0804819416

Films and Books on Donald Richie

• Sneaking In. Donald Richie's Life in Film. Directed by Brigitte Prinzgau-Podgorschek, Navigator Film Produktion/Peter Stockhaus Filmproduktion, GmbH, Vienna, 2002
• Silva, Arturo, ed. (2001). The Donald Richie Reader. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press. 10-ISBN 1-880-65661-2; 13-ISBN 978-1-880-65661-7 (cloth)
• Klaus Volkmer and Olaf Möller.Ricercar fuer Donald Richie. Taschenbuch (1997)

Films by Donald Richie

Donald Richie is the author of about 30 experimental films from five to 47 minutes long, six of which have been published on DVD^[9]. None were originally meant for public screening^[10]. The pieces on the DVD, all originally shot in 16 mm, are^[10]:

• Wargames, 1962 22 minutes
• Atami Blues, 1962, 20 minutes, soundtrack by Tōru Takemitsu
• Boy with Cat, 1967, 5 minutes
• Dead Youth, 1967, 13 minutes
• Five Philosophical Fables, 1967, 47 minutes
• Cybele, 1968, 20 minutes

Among the short works not included in the collection are for example Small Town Sunday (1941, 8 mm), filmed when he was still resident in the United States, A Sentimental Education (1953), Aoyama Kaidan (1957), Shu-e (1958), and Life (1965)^[10].

Other films:

• Akira Kurosawa, 1975, 58 minutes, 35 mm in color and b/w. Produced by Atelier 41 for NTV, Tokyo
• A Doll, 1968, 16 mm, 20 minutes, in color
• A couple, 1968, 35 mm, in b/w
• Nozoki Monogatari, 1967, 16 mm, released by Brandon Films
• Khajuraho, 1968, 16 mm, in color and b/w

Honors

• Kawakita Award first recipient in 1983^[11]
• Japan Foundation: Japan Foundation Award, 1995.^[12]
• John D. Rockefeller 3rd Award (Asian Cultural Council) in 1993^[13]
• National Society of Film Critics Awards, USA: Special Award (1971)

^[8]

External links

• Donald Richie: Japanese Cinema: Film Style and National Character. Anchor Books, New York 1961/1971 (Whole book in PDF format)
• Citizens of Limbo - An essay on Richie and expatriates
• Conversation with Donald Richie, from Conversations with History: Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

See also (Richie's friends and collaborators)

• Yukio Mishima
• Tamotsu Yato
• Meredith Weatherby
• Leza Lowitz

Notes

References

• IMC Books, "Books by Donald Richie". http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~tc9w-ball/KI/richied/DonaldRichieBooks.htm. Retrieved 2009-01-20. 
• Sharp, Jasper (March 6, 2005). "A Donald Richie Film Anthology". http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/donaldrichie.shtml. Retrieved 2009-01-10. 
• Sharp, Jasper (December 8, 2003). "Midnight Eye Interview: Donald Richie". http://www.midnighteye.com/interviews/donald_richie.shtml. Retrieved 2009-01-10. 
• Silva, Arturo, ed. (2001). The Donald Richie Reader. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press. 10-ISBN 1-880-65661-2; 13-ISBN 978-1-880-65661-7 (cloth)

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