The silent traveller in Japan

the long version

Customs and rituals, dress and language, poetry and drama, painting and sculpture, kites and carp, trees and flowers, everything is revealed to us in Mr. Chiang's inimitable text and delightful drawings. Familiar centers and out-of-the-way corners of Japan all come under the Silent Traveler's scrutiny--Tokyo's Cinza, a Shinto dance at Ise, Kyoto's Phoenix Hall, cormorant-fishing in Gifu, Mr. Fuji, an Ainu village, the five hundred arhats, the beardless hippies of Tokyo, the perennial towel-bearing bathers at a resort hotel, the phenomenon of the marimos, red-crested cranes--and much more.