Kenoma talks literature

Confucius Lives Next Door
What Living In The East Teaches Us About Living In The West
T.R. Reid

I don't think Scholastic Deth could have said it any better. "Even if I had all the time in the world, I doubt I could read all the books that I should!" Especially, with a busy high school schedule along with juggling college admissions, I rarely have time to do anything relaxing. Besides sleep, that is. I enjoy reading, but most of the time spent doing that is restricted to rote memorization of thick textbooks. So whenever I need a change of pace, I look no further than to this book, Confucius Lives Next Door, which I've been reading on and off for the past few months.

The author of the book is T.R. Reid, whom I recognized from some of his appearances on NPR. I don't know what the T and the R stand for. Maybe Trafalgar Rutherford? Anyways, when Mr. Reid, or should I say "Reido-san," took the position of chief of the Washington Post's Tokyo bureau, he and his family packed up all their stuff and shipped themselves to the Land of the Rising Sun. This book is not only a personal account of his and his family's tenure in Tokyo, but also a dissection of East Asian society and the traditional Confucian ethics deeply instilled into their culture.

The thing I love the most about the book is in the way its written. Reid talks to you as if you're sitting at lunch with him in a quiet restaurant. Each convoluted Japanese tradition/method is explained in the clearest fashion. Whether it's in statistical observations of crime rates in Japan and America or the explanation of the Japanese alphabet (which consists of FOUR different alphabets), the rhetoric is understandable rather than banal. More importantly is his analysis of East Asia's "post-war miracle"; the incredible boom in industry and economy that swept the Eastern Hemisphere following World War II, especially in his explanation of how Japan was able to build itself back from the dystopic ashes of Hirojima and Nagasaki and, in the process, become one of the vanguard nations of the world. To complement these historical anecdotes are humorous insights into the Reid family's personal experiences in Tokyo. The highlight being the dialogue between Reid and his own "Confucius", Matsuda-san, the impeccably polite, calm, friendly, and insightful next-door neighbor, who explains, as simply as Reid tells this story, the ins-and-outs of the principles of Confucian philosophy and Japanese custom.

To quote the San Jose Mercury News, "Striking a nice balance between edification and entertainment, Reid mixes statistics and historical research with day-to-day tales of neighbors, school life and joining-the-corporation ceremonies to present his thesis of Confucianism as code and context...A penetrating mix of anecdote and analysis." Confucius Lives Next Door is a captivating, thought-provoking read (no pun intended) perfect for late nights or just as a pick-up-and-go type of thing. It will bring laughs and learning (that was awful).