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Review of Autumn Light -Japan’s Season Of Fire And Farewells
Pico Iyer’s meditation on autumn, a love letter to Japan
Pico Iyer’s Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells reads like a love letter to the country that Iyer calls home for several months each year. Married to Hiroko, a native of Kyoto who walked out of a traditional marriage with her two kids decades ago, Iyer has lived in Japan for thirty-two years on a tourist visa. The combination of his foreignness, his inability to speak the language, and the knowledge that he will never truly be included into the fold gives Iyer a certain critical distance from the subject of Japan, making this book an especially poignant meditation on his life.
Most people travel or move to exotic locations in search of novelty, to rejuvenate their jaded eyes and hearts, or to seek inspiration for creative pursuits. Iyer, however, takes the opposite path. At the start of his book, he patiently walks the reader through Deer Slope, the neighborhood in the city of Nara where he has always lived-”a ruler-straight, ten-block grid with streets named Park-dori and School-dori, laid out like a stage set from the Universal Studios theme park, a Japanese rendition of California.”
By casting a sharp eye on his daily routine, Iyer illuminates the extraordinary in the ordinary day. We…
