{"product_id":"9781462902057","title":"Village Japan: Everyday Life in a Rural Japanese Community","description":"\u003cb\u003eIn this elegiac account that is part travelogue, part memoir, British poet and writer Malcolm Ritchie recounts his and his wife's unforgettable three-year-sojourn in Sora, a remote farming and fishing village on the Japan Sea coast.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Ritchie weaves together anecdotes, conversations, lyrical verses, and unforgettable character studies to vividly and hauntingly evoke the rhythms of life in a traditional rural Japanese community. Underlying this portrait is the author's growing awareness that the aged inhabitants of Sora and the surrounding villages are the custodians of a fragile, barely surviving, way of life, one that is still informed by the cadences of the natural world, under the tutelage of its ancient gods. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe book is a paean to a once noble culture all but effaced by Western industrial\/technological materialism-the \"cultural carcinogens\" of the West-which Asian countries such as Japan have all too willingly embraced. Always profound and moving, \u003ci\u003eVillage Japan\u003c\/i\u003e pays lyrical homage to a side of Japan rarely experienced or glimpsed by foreigners today.","brand":"Tuttle Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47129575817456,"sku":"9781462902057","price":5.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781462902057_p0.jpg?v=1763679886","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781462902057","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}