Counter-Kabuki

Counter-Kabuki is a collection of improbable conversations, inspired by newspaper accounts of the unimaginably goofy things that have happened (and still happen) in Japan. Half a lifetime of living there persuaded the author that you have to work really hard to have fun in that odd-but-familiar land; this book is a culimination of those labors.

About the Author

Jared Lubarsky taught literature at Haverford College in the U.S. before his first sojourn in Japan as a Visiting Professor at Hirosaki University, in the frozen far north, in 1973. That appointment completed, he moved to Tokyo and worked for the Japan Foundation as their editorial consultant, then returned to teaching--ultimately spending thirty years in-country before retiring to the sunnier clime of Spain. He has written extensively on things Japanese for cultural journals, inflight magazines, newspapers in Japan and the U.S., and travel publications; this book, his second, was compiled from sketches composed over those years--in the spirit of counterpose to the studied, serious vein in which so much gets written about Japan.