Shinohata: A Portrait of a Japanese Village

Not many foreigners have the chance to live in a Japanese village, certainly not foreigners who are sufficiently at home to do so as unobtrusively and intimately as the author of this book. Ronald Dore went to Shinohata twenty years ago when he was studying the land reform which broke the power of Japan's landlords. He went back many times thereafter to stay with friends.

Now he has distilled his memories, field notes, diaries, and some recent forays with a tape recorder into a book which br...