The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto
by Pico Iyer
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Book Summary Information
Author: Pico IyerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1992-10-27
ISBN: 0679738347
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto
Book Review: Beautiful but aggravating
Summary: 3 Stars
There is no doubt that Pico Iyer is a masterful writer: his descriptions of Kyoto and Japan are breathtakingly gorgeous. He does have a tendency to ramble at times, but the passages that are good are worth slogging through the ones that drag.
However, there are parts of this book that do not seem plausible. Never once does he get frustrated by the language barrier or long for a cheeseburger. (I lived in Japan for three years and can attest its only natural to feel homesick or lonely.) He spends his year in Japan in perfect harmony with everything around him, has no troubles with the shabby guesthouse he lives in or the woman that (he admits) uses him to fulfill her warped idea of romance. He is guilty of his own criticism of how the Japanese seem so innocent, so willing to look at the bright side all of the time.
Furthermore his relationship with "Sachiko" seems almost unbelievable. (PS - why does he even bother to change the name when he dedicated the book to Hiroko on the first page?) How does this Eton, Oxford, and Harvard-educated world traveller (who loves dropping names about all the great authors he reads) manage to fall in love with a woman who hardly speaks his language and who's never been outside of Kyoto? He goes on and on about all the deep conversations they had, when really I don't see how it's possible. He paints Sachiko like the kind of girl people go to Japan for all the time: always agreeing, never arguing, always dressing up and buying presents. He looks down on all the guys who come to Japan to find a girl and yet never admits he did the same thing. Furthermore, their relationship is so painfully selfish and childish that I can't help but hate the guy at times; he talks about his "great" romance but never discusses the subsequent divorce, financial difficulty, toll on the children, etc. As far as I remember, he only played with the kids a handful of times, instead stealing away with his "lady" at all hours of the night. I'm asking myself the whole time I read this book, "Who's watching the children?!" I'm sure these two love each other and all (as they are still living together. Are they married?) but I just think his recollection of their relationship is a bit too melodramatic, too "magical" to be believed. It's too innocent, too, by Iyer's definition, "Japanese".
As a work of fiction this book is stunning, but as a memoir, I feel it's a bit too farfetched. But regardless his prose really is a work of art.
Summary of The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto
When Pico Iyer decided to go to Kyoto and live in a monastery, he did so to learn about Zen Buddhism from the inside, to get to know Kyoto, one of the loveliest old cities in the world, and to find out something about Japanese culture today -- not the world of businessmen and production lines, but the traditional world of changing seasons and the silence of temples, of the images woven through literature, of the lunar Japan that still lives on behind the rising sun of geopolitical power.All this he did. And then he met Sachiko.
Vivacious, attractive, thoroughly educated, speaking English enthusiastically if eccentrically, the wife of a Japanese "salaryman" who seldom left the office before 10 P.M., Sachiko was as conversant with tea ceremony and classical Japanese literature as with rock music, Goethe, and Vivaldi. With the lightness of touch that made Video Night in Kathmandu so captivating, Pico Iyer fashions from their relationship a marvelously ironic yet heartfelt book that is at once a portrait of cross-cultural infatuation -- and misunderstanding -- and a delightfully fresh way of seeing both the old Japan and the very new.
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