From Publishers Weekly
English professor Davidson recounts her travels in Japan in the 1980s; BOMC selection in cloth.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
One of America's most significant exports is the English language and the culture that accompanies it. Thousands of Americans have gone abroad to teach English, and hundreds of them have written books about their experiences. These books tend to reveal as much about their authors--and thus our shared American culture--as they do about the host culture in which they find themselves. A professor at Duke who has visited Japan four times, Davidson writes perceptively, frankly, and personally about her struggles to understand Japanese ways. She also attempts to reconcile those ways with her own life. Davidson has much to say about the role of women in both cultures and of the problems of trying to live in both worlds, but, unlike most authors of this genre, she is nonjudgmental and fair. This is one of the best "explanations" of Japanese culture, and our problems in understanding it, that has come along in years. Highly recommended.
- Harold M. Otness, Southern Oregon State Coll. Lib., Ashland
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
In spiritual counterpoint to Rising Sun and the Japan-bashing currently in vogue comes a luminous, sincere book that offers another view. Named after a classic series of prints depicting a variety of points of view of Japan's sacred mountain, Davidson's essays do much the same thing for the entire nation. Drawing upon her range of experiences living and working in Japan off and on for 10 years, Davidson tries to understand the essence of the country. She finds it difficult to pin down, however, because each encounter with it reveals yet another layer of its society's inner workings. Sometimes frustrated, often unsure of protocol, Davidson remains open and sensitive to the Japanese way of life. Her love of the culture is clear, and as she and her husband struggle with whether to settle there, she begins to examine not only Japan but also her own life and values. Nuanced and passionate, her book achieves what many travel writers can only aspire to: the sense of being both inside and outside of a culture at the same time and the profound feeling that this journey has indeed led her to someplace she always wanted to go. Mary Ellen Sullivan --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews
Travel memoir about the author's four trips to Japan that grows like a novel and takes on unusual richness as it keeps reinvesting itself in earlier scenes and people. Davidson (English/Duke; co-ed., The Last Tradition, 1980, etc.) and her husband, Ted, first moved to Osaka in 1980 to teach at ``Kansai Women's University'' (a fictional composite), where she instructed a class in spoken English. Despite trying several times, the author never did master Japanese--though it must be said that, in turn, most of her Japanese students seemed to have learned an artificial English that has little tie to own. Davidson writes about almost nothing for itself alone but, rather, for its emotional impact on her, and nearly all the people she describes here are composites who become vehicles of feeling. She writes this way because the Japanese usually hide their deeper feelings, and those she knows personally would be embarrassed by appearing recognizably on these pages--especially being portrayed in exactly the emotional states they usually cover over most carefully. These novelistic devices, along with the way the Davidsons' visits to Japan gather depth of feeling, lend her account a personal quality all her own--and may give it a longer life than most travel memoirs. Davidson reveals little new about the Japanese, but what she makes clear are the shame and humiliation she most commonly feels with her students, fellow Japanese teachers, Japanese friends, and street people, all of whom see her as gaijin (foreigner) and cry out ``Speak no Engrish!'' (Perhaps because of this humiliation, the Davidsons, rather than settle down in Japan, finally build a Japanese house in North Carolina). Over the ten years covered, many deaths occur, especially in the final pages, which adds a memorable darkening to the text. Top-drawer. (Eighteen line drawings) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.