36 Views Of Mount Fuji: On Finding Myself In Japan

In 1980 Cathy Davidson traveled to Japan to teach English at a leading all-women's university. It was to be the beginning of a deep and abiding fascination. Cathy Davidson had imagined a Japan of rock gardens with raked sand, of delicately arched wooden bridges and glowing paper lanterns. She was not prepared for the grim modernity of Osaka with its garish billboards and dingy concrete apartment blocks. Yet gradually another Japan revealed itself to her—one of rituals and communal baths, of temples with rice-paper walls, of pleasures that are subtle and lasting and deep emotions expressed without words. Even more unexpected, this Japan suggested to her secrets about herself. Spirited and original, "36 Views of Mount Fuji" is at once a look at the seductiveness and disappointments of being a stranger in a strange land, the memoir of a deeply personal interior journey, and a poignant meditation on whether we can see things clearly only at a distance.