Synopses & Reviews
In 1954, famed mythologist Joseph Campbell traveled, at age 50, to Asia for the first time. In this second volume of his Asian journals, he continues East after nearly seven months in India, moving through Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and finally coming to rest, for a full five months, in Japan. Fueled by his remarkable eye for cultural differences and similarities, yet written through the unjaded perspective of a remarkably erudite teacher on his first trip to the Asia he has studied for most of his life, Sake and Satori is a unique snapshot of 1950s Asia and its rapidly changing post-colonial and Cold War tensions.
Synopsis
In this second volume of his Asian journals, Campbell reports on his travels through east Asia and his five-month stay in Japan. Sake and Satori includes the never-before-published sequel to Campbells Baksheesh and Brahman and covers the authors journeys through Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. It offers a snapshot of 1950s Asia and its rapidly changing postcolonial and Cold War tensions. Campbell shares his experiences with Noh drama, Kabuki theater, and geisha houses, and explores how Asia absorbs and resists Western notions of gender, pluralism, and wealth. He relates conversations with fellow travelers, scholars, and Japanese people from all walks of life. Along the way, his asides develop into philosophical explorations augmented with photos and drawings.