One must approach Kerr’s ‘Lost Japan’ with a deep love for Japan. Few other texts would write ‘Japan is one of the ugliest countries in the world’.
Kerr mostly discusses traditional culture uses this to frame a belief that Japan has lost its vigour, and sense of identity. This is the arena in which Kerr is most familiar as an art collector and it is marvellous to read about nuances in calligraphy, Kabuki, or Zen koans, and how each of these is underappreciated. References to Japan’s relation to nature or its economic outlook are thin otherwise, but that would make this book factual, and it has more power in treading between the mystical and the real, and trying to evoke the former.