The “Japan” of Recent American Writers

Dharma Bums, Then and Now (from the Los Angeles Times Book Review)

For a certain class of contemporary literary travelers — Westerners, particularly Americans — Japan some time ago surpassed Europe as the favored destination for the Wanderjahr. Critics have observed that Tokyo and Kyoto seem to have become for young American writers what Paris was for Hemingway’s generation.

The “Japan” of writers is, of course, half-imaginary, and what is interesting is how, since the 1960s, this literary conception of “Japan” has changed — from the locus of enlightenment (for the Beats and other spiritual seekers) to an internationalized zone of decadence and self-destruction (for the Byronic heroes of contemporary novels).

Jack Kerouac’s “The Dharma Bums” (1958) might be viewed as the point of departure and one long bon-voyage party for Japhy Ryder, as Kerouac called Gary Snyder in his book. Coming from the East Coast, Kerouac was smitten by the Beat scene in Berkeley, and his admiration focuses on Snyder, pictured in a cottage with tatami mats on the floor, sitting cross-legged at a low table, translating Han Shan’s “Cold…