Description
THE KIMONO MIND is a guide only in the sense that it persuades the reader to forego the inanity of industrialized tourism and strike out on his own line. In other words, the author pleads for a rebirth of the art of travel, for whose practice, he main tains, no part of the globe is better suited than today's Japan. Some of his advice-on language and etiquette is for stoics only; that on bill- paying, go-betweens, or maid-chasing is useful in general. Clearly, his is not the hallucinatory vision of a never-never land; he wastes little love on temples and shrines (most of them modern reconstructions) or on the fanciful hobbies and attendant aesthetic ecstasies (now largely com- mercialized). He is at his happiest when he describes the Japanese ministering to their im- memorial conceits.
For Puritans, Mr. Rudofsky thinks he himself is a confirmed hedonist-there is no better mental therapy than spending some time among the Japanese ("Be prepared for the fact that in Japan there is no sin, original or otherwise"). To watch the ease with which they keep afloat in an atmosphere of total ambiguity is not only an exhilarating experience but also a salutary lesson in human relations. Surveying the wreckage of their glorious culture, and the giddy civilization they are building on it ("anybody who wants to study Americanization had better go to Japan these days"), Mr. Rudofsky finds it the most fascinating place this side of the moon. His book brilliantly conveys his opinion. ISBN:4805302747 
