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Booth walked the length of mainland Japan from its most northern tip Cape Soya to the southern Cape Sata in 1977. After living in Japan for seven years, in Tokyo, initially, to study theatre, and then writing for various newspapers and magazines, he felt he wanted to better understand the country he lived in, and had married into. First published in 1985, recently reissued, The Roads to Sata is a wonderful account of the ordinary and surprising. Eloquent and witty, Booth is keenly observant of the landscape, the culture and the people. His descriptions are vivid and honest, revealing the best, worst and curious of this time. 1970s Japan is moving fast—new highways, big industry, expanding cities—but retains a slower pace in the byways, on the old tracks, and in the villages that Booth passes through. Within a few pages, you will be hooked. By the landscape descriptions: “The mist lay so thick on the hills that it hid them, and the rain continued to flatten the sea.” “In the silent gardens of the old houses in Kakunodate the tops of the stone lanterns are lumpy and green, the stone wells drip with dark water that congeal in the summer heat. The moss is black-green and thick as a poultice.” By his hilarious and at times frustrating encounters: So many offers of a ride to the gaijin who wants to walk! “On the road into the city I was twice greeted in English. At a drive-in a young truck driver jumped out of his cab and said, ‘You, foot, yes, and good for walk, but sun day—rain day, oh, Jesus Christ!’ Further on, a businessman stopped his car to offer me a lift and, clearly, puzzled by my refusal, said, ‘Then what mode of transportation are you embarking?’ Japanese slipped out: ’Aruki desu.’ ‘Aruki?’ 'Aruki’. A digestive pause. ‘Do you mean to intend that you have pedestrianised?’ I nodded. He drove away, shaking his head.” By Booth’s observations of culture, both ancient and modern, of history and folklore: “But at the village of Kanagawa that night they were dancing. Four red demons with clubs made of baseball bats, a snow queen covered in silver cooking foil, a black nylon crow, three coal miners with lamps, a robot with a body of cardboard boxes—all danced in the small school playground, round the car whose battery powered the microphone into which a bent old woman was singing. Her only accompaniment was one taiko drum and the scattered clapping of the dancers.” With laugh out loud passages, his encounters with oddities on the road and in the ryokans (tradition inns) he stays in, as well as haunting and searingly honest moments as he meets ordinary people who reveal their personal histories, Booth relates his conversations with humility and insight. All this taken together with both the grind and beauty of walking for 128 days over 3300 km, makes The Roads to Sata an illuminating travelogue, vivid and rich—and all the more so for Alan Booth’s turns of phrase, superb language and witty style. |