Max Milligan's images convey the serene beauty & unique aura of these sites, & range from descriptive & informative views to strikingly abstract & inspiring compositions. The text by Aubrey Burl, the acknowledged authority on the subject, offers detailed historical accounts & descriptions of the sites, & recounts the powerful myths & legends that have surrounded them & persist to this day.
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Describes the life of an Englishman in Japan, a banker by day & a writer by night, & what it feels like to be a chameleon in a pin-stripe suit: the strange sensation of returning to Japan, as another persona comes back to life, part Japanese, part gaijin; the gradual internalization of an alien culture; & the bittersweet adventure of becoming someone other. The book records the experience of an outsider in a country where the group is all-powerful, & of an individual in a society where conformity is an almost religious duty. It describes a journey through the looking glass land of a foreigner in Tokyo & the invisible country which exists in the mind of the Japanese, into the interior
- in search of the heart of Japan.