Donald Richie

For the U.S. Senate historian, see Donald A. Ritchie.

Donald Richie (born 1924, Lima, Ohio) is an American-born author who has written a number of books about the Japanese people and Japanese cinema.

Biography

During World War II, he served aboard Liberty ships as a purser and medical officer.

In 1947, Richie first went to Japan with the American occupation force, a job he saw as an opportunity to escape his dull life in Lima, Ohio. He first worked as a typist, and then as a civilian staff writer for the Pacific Stars and Stripes. While in Tokyo, he became fascinated with Japanese culture, particularly Japanese cinema. He was soon writing movie reviews in the Stars And Stripes. After returning stateside, he enrolled at Columbia University's School of General Studies in 1949, and received his Bachelor's degree in English in 1953. Richie then returned to Japan as film critic for the The Japan Times and spent much of the second half of the twentieth century living there. In 1959, he published his first book, The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, coauthored with Joseph Anderson. In this book, Richie distinguishes between "representational" and "presentational" approaches to filmmaking. He served as Curator of Film at the New York Museum of Modern Art from 1969 to 1972. In 1988, he was invited to become the first guest director at the Telluride Film Festival.

Books

Many of Richie's books show his appreciation for the people and scenery of Japan. Among his most noted works in this field are The Inland Sea, a travel classic and Public People, Private People, a look at some of Japan's most significant and most mundane people. He has compiled two collections of essays on Japan: A Lateral View and Partial Views. A collection of his writings has been published to commemorate fifty years of writing about Japan: The Donald Richie Reader. The Japan Journals: 1947-2004 consists of extended excerpts from his diaries. In 1991, filmmakers Lucille Carra and Brian Cotnoir produced a film version of The Inland Sea, which Richie narrated. Produced by Travelfilm Company, the film won numerous awards, including Best Documentary at the Hawaii International Film Festival (1991) and the Earthwatch Film Award. It screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992.

Author Tom Wolfe describes Richie as: "the Lafcadio Hearn of our time, a subtle, stylish, and deceptively lucid medium between two cultures that confuse one another: the Japanese and the American."

Japanese cinema

Richie's most widely recognized accomplishment has been his analysis of Japanese cinema. From his first published book, Richie has revised not only the library of films he discusses, but the way he analyzes them. With each subsequent book, he has focused less on film theory and more on the conditions in which the films were made. One thing that has remained constant throughout his works is an emphasis on the "presentational" nature of Japan's cinema, in contrast to the "representational" films of the West. His book, A Hundred Years Of Japanese Film includes a helpful guide to the availability of the films mentioned in the text. In the foreword to this book, Paul Schrader says: "Whatever we in the West know about Japanese film, and how we know it, we most likely owe to Donald Richie." Richie also has written analyses of two of Japan's most well known filmmakers: Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa.

Honors

• Japan Foundation: Japan Foundation Award, 1995.

External links

• Citizens of Limbo - An essay on Richie and expatriates
• Conversation with Donald Richie, from Conversations with History: Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

References

• Silva, Arturo, ed. (2001). The Donald Richie Reader. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press. 10-ISBN 1-880-65661-2; 13-ISBN 978-1-880-65661-7 (cloth)