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Alex Kerr

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Alex Kerr


Born
Bethesda, Maryland, The United States
Genre


Born in 1952, he's an American writer and Japanologist that has lived in Japan since 1977.


Librarian note: There are other authors with the same name. To see the English historian go to Alex Kerr.
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Average rating: 3.88 · 7,243 ratings · 674 reviews · 25 distinct works â€� Similar authors
Lost Japan

3.80 avg rating — 3,748 ratings — published 1993 — 20 editions
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Dogs and Demons: Tales from...

3.77 avg rating — 1,233 ratings — published 2001 — 17 editions
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Another Kyoto

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Living in Japan

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4.13 avg rating — 229 ratings — published 2006 — 20 editions
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Another Bangkok: Reflection...

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Finding the Heart Sutra: Gu...

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Hidden Japan: An Astonishin...

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Bangkok Found: Reflections ...

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3.98 avg rating — 60 ratings — published 2010 — 6 editions
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Shot Down: The Secret Diary...

4.25 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 2015 — 7 editions
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No Bars Between

4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings2 editions
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More books by Alex Kerr…
Quotes by Alex Kerr  (?)
Quotes are added by the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ community and are not verified by Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ.

“Why has pachinko swept Japan? It can hardly be the excitement of gambling, since the risks and rewards are so small. During the hours spent in front of a pachinko machine, there is an almost total lack of stimulation other than the occasional rush of ball bearings. There is no thought, no movement; you have no control over the flow of balls, apart from holding a little lever which shoots them up to the top of the machine; you sit there enveloped in a cloud of heavy cigarette smoke, semi-dazed by the racket of millions of ball bearings falling through machines around you. Pachinko verges on sensory deprivation. It is the ultimate mental numbing, the final victory of the educational system." - Lost Japan, Eng. vers., 1996”
Alex Kerr

“. . . Japan has a fundamental problem with information itself: it’s often lacking, and when it does exist, is fuzzy at its best, bogus at its worst. In this respect, Japan’s traditional culture stands squarely at odds with modernity—and the problem will persist. The issue of hidden or falsified information strikes at such deeply rooted social attitudes that the nation may never entirely come to grips with it. Because of this, one may confidently predict that in the coming decades Japan will continue to have trouble digesting new ideas from abroad—and will find it more and more difficult to manage its own increasingly baroque and byzantine internal systems.”
Alex Kerr, Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan

“It is not, of course, only the Japanese who find flat sterile surfaces attractive and kirei. Foreign observers, too, are seduced by the crisp borders, sharp corners, neat railings, and machine-polished textures that define the new Japanese landscape, because, consciously or unconsciously, most of us see such things as embodying the very essence of modernism. In short, foreigners very often fall in love with kirei even more than the Japanese do; for one thing, they can have no idea of the mysterious beauty of the old jungle, rice paddies, wood, and stone that was paved over. Smooth industrial finish everywhere, with detailed attention to each cement block and metal joint: it looks ‘modernâ€�; ergo, Japan is supremely modern.”
Alex Kerr, Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan

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