Tokyo Nights by Donald Richie

Tokyo Nights
By Donald Richie

Review by Roy Mustang, JapanToday, October 21, 2005

Donald Richie's savage social satire of bubble-era Tokyo is as withering and hilarious as when it was first published in 1988. It's a dreamy but raunchy Shakesperian comedy of manners.

Paunchy company president Hiroshi and his aging mistress Mariko play out their little machinations against the backdrop of nightclub The Yamato (Old Japan), set to be remodeled at Hiroshi's expense - if only Mariko can parlay his wandering eye into guilt enough to open his bulging wallet.

Recently reissued, Tokyo Nights is required reading for the city's English-speaking ghetto of sociology majors with no fixed address: the foreign perspective coming from inside the house. ("He knows us better than we know ourselves,"  says Mariko of Mr Paul, the novel-s voiceless foreign observer.)


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