Ito-San     by Marc Rigaudis, Translated by James Kirkup Original language: French Published by Peter Owen Publishers Pub. Date: 1991 Format: Hardcover, 136 pages ISBN: 072060818X List Price: $29.00, £13.95 buy now directly from the publisher Free Shipping Worldwide Published by Peter Owen Publishers Pub. Date: 1991 Pub. Place: UK Format: 160 pages List Price: £13.95 Not available for ordering

A harsh documentary-style set of stories that takes contemporary Japanese society apart and then smashes it to bits. All the usual stereotypes are here; the salaryman and his after-work drinking exhibitions, the crushing conventionality and the killer conformism of an over-ordered society. Even the over-pressurised suicidal schoolkid limps into view.


Rigaudis’ totally hostile view of Japanese society will please the Nipponophobes but probably disturb those who find pleasures and enlightenment in this old, different and sophisticated culture. Whatever the view on the ethics of the book (is its lack of balance a deliberate sensationalisation with racist overtones?) the short scenarios on different angles of domestic, school, business and sexual life that make it up are well-focused and entertainingly written. Apart from the lack of any lighter tones — even if added just to set off the dark shapes and shadows — this is a minor work of art, particularly revealing about marriage, the sex industry and other psycho-sexual arenas of modern Japan.

‘Rioshi Takahashi was thirty-six. He was rich — rich because his father, now dead, had been rich. He was still not married, preferring to take his time before saddling himself for life with some creature with whom he would have to share everything. His bank account would always allow him to marry some pretty little thing ten or fifteen years younger than himself and whom he could mould to his own satisfaction.

Friends of the family regularly tried to introduce him to promising young women. Sometimes he agreed to meet them, but this was mainly to indulge the sadistic pleasure he experienced in looking the girl over, and in watching her straining to present herself in the best light, affecting goody-goody airs of a well-brought-up young lady, putting on those timid, frightened expressions she knew men appreciated.’ p65