Monday, October 20, 2008

Two legendary experts on East Asia, journalist Ian Buruma and translator John Nathan share the stage to discuss their new books—Buruma’s The China Lover and Nathan’s Living Carelessly in Tokyo & Elsewhere. That’s the jumping point for an engaging conversation on art, politics, and the “expat” life in Asia.

Ian Buruma is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College. A longtime resident of and expert on Asia, he is widely known for his essays in The New York Review of Books and elsewhere and his many books, including God’s Dust, Behind the Mask, The Wages of Guilt, and Murder in Amsterdam. Buruma received the 2008 Shorenstein Journalism Award and the 2008 Erasmus Prize and was recently included in Foreign Policy’s list of the world’s leading 100 public intellectuals.

In his enthralling new novel The China Lover, Buruma uses the real life of the starlet Yamaguchi Yoshiko as a lens through which to understand the contradictions and complexities of modern Japanese and Chinese history.

John Nathan is the Takashima Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies at U.C. Santa Barbara. He arrived in Tokyo fresh out of Harvard in 1961. By the middle of the next decade, he had translated the novels of both Yukio Mishima and the Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe into English. Nathan became widely recognized as a translator, as the author of the definitive biography of Mishima, Japan Unbound, and Sony: A Private Life, and as an Emmy-winning filmmaker.

Nathan’s newest book, Living Carelessly in Tokyo & Elsewhere, recounts his remarkable life in the arts in Japan and the US and the many friendships he made along the way.

Time:
Monday, October 20, 2008
6:00 pm

Location:
Mechanics’ Institute
57 Post Street, San Francisco [map]

Cost:
Japan Society, Asia Society & Mechanics’ Institute Members: FREE
General Public: $10

RSVP:
Call the ‘Events Line’ at 415.393.0100 or
email rsvp@milibrary.org

Reservations are held at Box Office.
Arrive 15 minutes before event for seat selection.

Co-sponsored by the Asia Society Northern California and the Mechanics’ Institute