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Usually ships in 1 business days | | Only 3 left in stock, order soon! | | | | | | When Peter Carey offered to take his son to Japan, 12-year-old Charley stipulated no temples or museums. He wanted to see manga, anime, and cool, weird stuff. His father said yes. Out of that bargain comes this enchanting tour of the mansion of Japanese culture, as entered through its garish, brightly lit back door. Guided–and at times judged–by an ineffably strange boy named Takashi, the Careys meet manga artists and anime directors, the meticulous impersonators called “visualists,” and solitary, nerdish otaku. Throughout, the Booker Prize-winning novelist makes observations that are intriguing even when–as his hosts keep politely reminding him–they turn out to be wrong. Funny, surprising, distinguished by its wonderfully nuanced portrait of a father and son thousands of miles from home, Wrong About Japan is a delight. | | | |
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| | Product Details | | Author: | Peter Carey | | Paperback: | 176 pages | | Publisher: | Vintage | | Publication Date: | January 03, 2006 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 1400078369 | | Product Length: | 5.23 inches | | Product Width: | 0.52 inches | | Product Height: | 8.0 inches | | Product Weight: | 0.42 pounds | | Package Length: | 7.9 inches | | Package Width: | 5.3 inches | | Package Height: | 0.3 inches | | Package Weight: | 0.4 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 23 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 23 customer reviews )
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73 of 84 found the following review helpful:
 a disappointment Nov 11, 2004
By Pithetaphish
"pithetaphish"
I should say first that I'm not what you'd call a devotee of Carey's work. But the man has scored two Booker Prizes for himself, and he's writing on a subject that I am deeply fascinated by. So I thought I'd give him another chance.
Pulling it off the shelf at my local bookstore, I was surprised by the physical lack of substance. At 120 easily-digestible pages, I had it read in less than two hours. Granted, 120 pages doesn't give you much room to manoeuvre. I would have liked to have seen what Carey could've done with this book had there been an extra hundred, or even fifty pages.
But as it stands, 'Wrong About Japan' is a surface account of anime and manga culture in Japan, that goes into no specific detail, except in giving synopses of the opening scene of 'Blood: The Last Vampire' and the first half hour of 'My Neighbour Totoro'. It does contain the occasional laugh and genuinely funny culture shock. but for the most part I felt as if Carey was just giving me excuse after excuse as to why he's not delving past the surface of this world that is always talked up as being so different to the West.
As the book progressed, and as Carey's own 'misreadings' of anime and manga are turned aside by a series of Japanese industry folk (who might as well have all been played by one actor in different costumes, for all the individuality the narrative accords them), I was left with the slightly sour impression that Carey himself, whilst faithfully recording these put downs, wasn't all that open to considering them.
I felt his growing frustration with being told no, his analysis was not correct (and why on earth he never asks 'why not?' is beyond me; as far as i'm aware, Barthes' declaration that the author is dead still holds some weight). I can sympathise with that, as can anyone who has been to another country and felt the culture shock. But I could not warm to Carey as either narrator or author - my problem with his work, and this book proved no different, is his sheer arrogance. Nowhere did Carey show us as readers that he was seriously attempting to engage with Japanese culture - the sense I got was that he just wanted his questions answered so he could get the hell out of there, back to New York and his ivory tower, where everything's "normal".
Honestly, I'm not even sure why Carey decided to write this book. I never felt in the book that he was all that interested in anime and manga, either as legitimate branches of literature, or as anything other than strange novelties. My impression remains that Carey has taken a very high-brow attitude toward anime and manga - he's even quoting Tanizaki, the man who bemoaned all forms of modernisation in Japan as a death blow to traditional culture - and the novel suffers for it.
Several times, Carey speaks about finding the 'Real Japan', which he typically equates with swords and kabuki and communal bathing. I think he need only look to page 17, where his son's friend Takashi puts a more accurate spin on things:
"You saw pictures of temples? Yes, rocks, gravel, nice Japanese room, so simple. Houses with rough timber? Real Japanese people not like that."
13 of 13 found the following review helpful:
 Well-Intentioned, but Erroneous and Dreary Oct 03, 2006
By Scholar-Gipsy
It's odd indeed to read a non-fiction book (well, except that one essential character is actually a conflated invention of the author...a fact he neglects to share anywhere in the text) and find it unconvincing. But that is precisely the impression Carey's book gives.
I have lived and worked in Tokyo, where this specious memoir takes place, for two years now, and while I hardly fancy myself an expert on Japanese traditional or popular culture, I was noticing inaccuracies and flat-out mistakes from the first chapter on (if you can't even parse "gaijin" properly, I'm not likely to trust your insights elsewhere).
Peter Carey is excited about Japan. Great. Learning about Japanese pop culture is a way for him to connect to his son. Also great. He's read all the requisite authors (writers much better than he himself) -- Kennedy, Kerr, et alles. Still great.
Slapdash and shoddy research padded out with dull anecdotes to fill a scant 158 pages (and the volume is physically small, to boot!)? Not great at all.
Carey may be a fine novelist -- I take nothing away from his other books -- but this is hackwork. He puffs as though he's discovered a topic far more articulately and provocatively explored by literally dozens of other authors. And he lies, and flubs up, throughout. (Parenthetically, I hope he's a better dad than a journalist.)
Skip it. I got mine from the English-language section of my town's Japanese library, so it was a free if unfulfilling read. But I really wouldn't spend my money if I were you.
34 of 43 found the following review helpful:
Good Idea, boring, non-informed results Jan 30, 2005
By Jason S. Spear
This book seemed interesting to me, since I recently went to Japan to indulge my taste for Japanese pop culture. Much like the author's son, I didn't have much interest in going to temples or musuems(unless it was the Bandai or Ghibli Musuem) when I could go see a Godzilla movie or lose myself for a day at Nakano Broadway.
The author mentions visitng the Ghibli Musuem, but fails describe this wonderful place it at all! When interviewing the creator of Gundam, he is so narrowly focused on finding assumed hidden Japaneseness, he blows what could have been an entertaining interview. He knows nothing of these subjects. It's unfortunate that since Mr. Carey is a respected author he can get interviews with top shelf talent and waste everyones' time who is involved, including the reader's.
You will not gain much insight into anime, manga, or Japan from this book. If you are interested in these subjects buy "Cruising the Anime City" by Patrick Macias and Tomohiro Machiyama. It's a wonderful book that does a wonderful job of explaining the pop culture aspects of Tokyo.
22 of 28 found the following review helpful:
The only thing he got right is the title May 09, 2006
By Zack Davisson
"japanreviewed"
"Wrong about Japan" is an embarrassing book, and Peter Carey should be ashamed of himself. The basic premise is a father finds himself with an anime-obsessed son. Looking to bond a little, he suggests a trip to Japan for the two of them. Not wanting the foot the bill, and being a writer by trade, he cons his publisher into paying for the trip promising a book in return.
But Carey knows nothing of Japan, has no insight, discovers nothing. He seems well aware of this deficiency, padding out the book by quoting long passages from other, better books on Japan including Alex Kerr's "Lost Japan" and recapping, in detail, the first half hour of ""My Neighbor Totoro." He even invents a fictional character, Takashi, as a playmate for his son, but Carey's complete lack of knowledge into Japanese anime fans, or anything Japanese for that matter, renders him lifeless and untrue.
Worse still, in an attempt to justify the trip, Carey has whipped through a few books on Japanese culture and cobbled together a few pet theories that "explain it all." In an ultimate show of hubris, he refuses to relinquish these theories even when the actual people, such as master swordsmith Yoshindo Yoshihara or Gundam-creator Yoshiyuki Tomino, tell him how mistaken he is. He wants Gundam to be a metaphor for the atomic bomb. He wants swordsmithing to be a window into the military past. He wants everything to mean something, but refuses to listen to the actual explanations when offered him. (His interview with Yoshiyuki Tomino is especially painful. One imagines a Japanese scholar confronting the creator of "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe," demanding that he admit how Skeletor reflects on past fears of the bubonic plague ravaging Europe...)
It is too bad, because Carey's reputation gives him access that a more-qualified writer could have really done something with. A rare interview with Miyazaki Hayao, crumpled into a few paragraphs, could have been so much more. The trip to otaku-paradise Akihabara discusses toilet seats. It is all just wasted.
If you are looking for a quick travelogue, humorist Dave Barry's "Dave Barry Does Japan" does a much better job of an uninformed tourist being overwhelmed by it all. If you want actual insight into Japanese pop-culture, anime, swordsmithing, or anything else Japanese, there are dozens of better titles out there. If you want to pay for Carey's trip with his son, and come away disgusted with your purchase, by all means buy "Wrong About Japan." Just remember, he isn't going to be so kind to you when you want to hop on a plane.
16 of 20 found the following review helpful:
 The mystery of taste Feb 27, 2007
By M. Feldman
Many of the book's reviewers seem almost hyperbolically disappointed in what Carey accomplishes in "Wrong About Japan." They accuse him of superficiality in his approach to manga and anime. Pow! They accuse him of being unable to see past his own cultural assumptions. Bam! However, the book isn't primarily about any of that. It's about perception and mis-perception, about the divide between a father who loves books (and high culture) and a son who loves manga (and pop culture). It's about the mysteries of taste and how it's formed. It's about the difficulties almost everyone in the book, Japanese and non-Japanese, has in understanding what someone else is trying to express, whether the barrier is language or ideas or culture. In Carey's book, manga represents this distance between two people about what is worth knowing about and what is not. The subject could as easily be music or some other art where there's little communication between high and pop culture. By its conclusion, Carey understands his son's interests better (although he doesn't come to really share them) and his son reluctantly absorbs something of what his father is trying to tell him. This fragile little island of shared appreciation is what the book's all about.
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