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Beauty and Chaos: Slices and Morsels of Tokyo Life, by Michael Pronko
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Tokyo--City of Contradictions? Yes and no! The largest city in the world teems with chaotic energy and serene, human-scale beauty. Want to know the real city? Writing about Tokyo for over 15 years, essayist and professor Michael Pronko opens up Tokyo life and reveals what's beneath the gleaming, puzzling exterior of the biggest city in the world. Whether contemplating Tokyo's odd-shaped bonsai houses, endless walls of bottles, pachinko parlors, chopstick ballet or the perilous habit of running for trains, the 45 essays in Beauty and Chaos explore Tokyo from inside to reveal the city's deeper meanings and daily pleasures. In turns comic, philosophic, descriptive and exasperated, Pronko's essays have been popular with Japanese readers for more than a decade.
Essay Topics Include:
- Waiting to Blossom Cherry Tree Maps
- The Shout of English T-Shirts
- Hanging Menus
- Inside the Smallest Places
- Standing Libraries
Japanese version available from KADOKAWA Publishers as: 僕、トーキョーの味方です マイケル・プロンコ
Scroll up and grab a copy today.
- Sales Rank: #1796931 in Books
- Published on: 2014-11-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .62" w x 5.25" l, .64 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 274 pages
Review
Gold Award First Place for Cultural Non-Fiction (Reader's Favorite Awards 2015) Gold Award for Creative Non-Fiction (eLit Awards 2015)
Silver Award for Travel Essay (eLit Award 2015)
Gold Award Non-Fiction Authors Association 2015
"Beauty and Chaos is a rare gem of exploration that holds the ability to sweep observer/readers into a series of vignettes that penetrate the heart of Tokyo's fast-paced world. Anyone planning a trip to the city (and many an armchair reader who holds a special affection for Japan) must have this in hand - and, in mind. Very highly recommended." --D. Donovan, Senior Book Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
"An exciting book that takes readers on a sightseeing trip of Tokyo, the place, its culture and essence." -- Mamta Madhavan for Readers' Favorite
"Pronko's topics are varied and surprising. He notices the kinds of things that might be taken for granted by the Japanese and overlooked entirely by visitors...These pieces feel flowing and natural, perhaps because many arose simply from walking around, people-watching." -Rebecca Foster, The Bookbag
"For readers interested in Japanese life and culture, or in simply reading a beautiful set of essays of a place you may or may never have been yourself, Beauty and Chaos is a spectacular read. Its essays are long enough to be cohesive and provocative while remaining short and sweet. The collection is masterful and unique, and well worth the time to read through. Pronko illustrates his points with marvelous skill." - Self-Publishing Review
"A cleareyed but affectionate portrait of a city that reaches beyond simple stereotypes. An elegantly written, precisely observed portrait of a Japanese city and its culture." Kirkus Reviews
"Japanese who are used to Tokyo are caught off guard by his conclusions derived from careful observation, and are struck dumb. Tokyo, the city we are so careless of, suddenly starts to become glorious. It is a wonder!" --Chunichi Shimbun (Newspaper)
About the Author
Pronko writes about Japanese culture, art, jazz, society, architecture and politics for Newsweek Japan, The Japan Times, Artscape Japan, as well as other venues. He has appeared on NHK and Nippon Television and runs his own website, Jazz in Japan (jazzinjapan.com). He teaches American Literature and Culture at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo and after class wanders Tokyo contemplating its intensity.
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating Glimpses
By Roger Brunyate
Michael Pronko came to Tokyo to teach English, but soon found himself writing about it. And in writing, to pose questions about this stimulating but strange culture and also, perhaps, to answer questions about himself. The 45 short essays in this volume (he has also published a sequel) are each about the length of a newspaper column. They are all well-written, and full of interesting insights. I have never been to Japan, so cannot judge for accuracy, but he sure convinces me.
He opens with a fascinating essay on the ubiquity of maps in Tokyo, for subways, neighborhoods, anything; he writes about the spaces between buildings, their odd shapes, and mixtures of old and new; and he has an entire section on Tokyo as a giant maze. He is fascinated by signs: signs that advertise, signs that negotiate the important transition between outside and inside; signs everywhere that lay out the precise rules for doing almost everything, from enjoying the park to using the toilet, positing a constant dynamic tension between rule-keeping and rule-breaking.
His writing made me think of Adam Gopnik's brilliant FROM PARIS TO THE MOON, the work of another foreign resident with a keen sense of observation. But Gopnik writes at NEW YORKER length; Pronko's much shorter pieces add up eventually to a similar wide view of his city, but it is that much more exhausting to get there, tapas rather than a main course; I would like to see what he could do in a more ample format. Perhaps that was why I so much enjoyed his final section, After Words, a sort of combination of author's biography, acknowledgements, and personal philosophy. He is an interesting guy.
[This book was sent to me by the author himself at the suggestion of another reader, but I have never met him, and owe him nothing other than an ordinary reader's appreciation for his writing.]
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Now convinced that Tokyo should not have been omitted...
By John P. Jones III
I've been to Japan a couple of times. Felt it best to avoid Tokyo, and so I flew directly into Osaka, with easy access thereafter to Kyoto. The latter does contain so much of what is worthwhile in Japan, and on a manageable scale. Tokyo on the other hand, or so I thought, was "trop," just too much, and would have been overwhelming and even incomprehensible.
Michael Pronko has lived in Tokyo for 15 years, teaching American literature, film, music and art at a Japanese university. He is a keen and thoughtful observer. He quotes Gustave Flaubert: "To make anything interesting, you simply have to look at it long enough." And 15 years of looking has provided a wealth of insights into life in Tokyo, which Pronko has broken down into bite-size pieces, in order to provide a mosaic of life there that is comprehensible. There are 48 essays in all, 3-5 pages each, with topics seemingly plucked at random for the "chaos" that is Tokyo.
Indicative of his wry insights, he connects the classic tea ceremony with its seeming antithesis, popping a soft drink out of a vending machine. He notes that one must still perform a "tea ceremony" bow in order to extract the soft drink from the machine. Restaurants feature hanging cloth menus, completed in beautiful calligraphy, in "kanji," of course. Pronko says: "These hanging signs enhance the appetite by highlighting the food, acting as a kind of linguistic condiment. Without reading the signs in Japan, half the beauty of eating is lost." He takes the reader shopping to a grand department store, "Don Quixote's," that seems to have no departments, but rather is a mad jumble that encourages impulsive buying. Bags for carrying objects have an entire hierarchy of importance and social significance. The best places to "people watch"? Train platforms, due to the lack of public space in other areas. As for the ever so brightly lit Pachinko parlors, Pronko concludes that they "...demand an unusual mixture of patience, optimism and compulsiveness." The author, in describing the maps dedicated to the cherry trees, and their famous blossoms, also uses a troika of words to describe them: "beauty, renewal and brevity." Tokyo has no grand vistas... it is literally a-MAZing, the subject of another meditation. He compares it to the Ryoanji in Kyoto, which displays 15 stones, but not all of them can be seen from one place.
A few more topics: the color "pink", and the respective difference in its importance, between Western and Japanese women. Escalators and stairs, and praise for the many small spaces, the nooks and crannies that still exist in this crowded city. There is still the contrast between the glitz and the glitter of chrome, and the old wooden buildings, of which the author says: "The back and forth between the two can be dizzying, but contributes to Tokyo's oddly variegated visual charm."
Like the good English teacher I suppose he is, Pronko "practices what he preaches" by not only writing well overall, but also ending each essay with a pithy one or two sentence summation. For the first time visitor to Japan, or the "repeat offenders," Pronko's essays are an essential "guide book" that should easily double the visitor's appreciation for the continuing "wonder that is Japan." As for my own quirky rating style for books, I reserve an extra star for those which provide a far better service than confirming my opinions; rather, Pronko's book actually changed my mind about Tokyo. 6-stars.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Guide for the caring traveller
By Ian Muldoon
One imagines there are two types of tourist. The first type travels to encounter all the comforts of home but in a different landscape, as the founder of Hilton hotels realised and made a fortune. The second type travels to "find out about the people and culture" and "broaden their experience" of the world. Both types are featured in the ads for the billion dollar travel industry.
Michael Pronko's book is more of a sociological study of the mores and behaviour of Japanese urban society and to that extent may be a very useful guide to the prospective employee of any Tokyo Foreign Embassy as well as a detailed guide to the serious traveller.
In my own case, as an Australian of urban upbringing I find such details of life as ascending and descending stairs or elevators a significant ritual in Sydney, where, on elevators, or stairs, one stands or walks to the left to allow those in a hurry to pass to the right, where young people help elderly, or stand aside, or on joining a train, stand back to allow passengers to disembark, and so on. But consider this from Beauty and Chaos page 201:
" The etiquette of moving to the left side (in Tokyo) when taking the escalator so that others can walk faster up the right is hardly ever followed on
the stairs. Stairs remain a site of uncompromising struggle. On crowded stairways, everyone seems to purposely disregard the arrows and lines trying vainly to direct traffic. People tend to push ahead at any angle and look aggravated if they have to step aside. Like some ancient conflict left unresolved, stairs seem to draw out inner frustrations."
Yet, we learn there are a seeming endless number of rules and orders about all aspects of public life. Socializing in private is rare, but common in public. There is a special sweetness and care about returning money, small change, after a purchase. And pauses in conversation are a special sign of polite and caring - beware those of Italian, Jewish or Australian heritage where conversation overlapping is a joyful norm n'est ce pas?
In short, Beauty and Chaos is a guide for the serious traveller, written with charm and grace and understanding.
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