Alan Booth was born in London in 1946 and travelled to Japan in 1970 to study Noh theatre. He stayed, working as a writer and film critic, until his untimely death in 1993.
'One of the classic Japan travel books of the modern age ... a vivid but witty portrayal of rural Japan in the seventies, and the quirky characters who populated it' * Japan Times * [Booth] achieved an extraordinary understanding of life as it is lived by ordinary Japanese....Frequently brilliant in his insights * The New York Times * Fluent in the language, well-informed and disabused, [Booth] is in the fine tradition of hard-to-please travellers like Norman Douglas, Evelyn Waugh, and V.S. Naipaul. A sharp eye and a good memory for detail...give an astonishing immediacy to his account. * The Times Literary Supplement * 'A marvellous glimpse of the Japan that rarely peeks through the country's public image' * Washington Post * 'A memorable, oddly beautiful book' * Wall Street Journal * 'Illuminating' * Economist *