The Lady and the Monk

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By Pico Iyer

Publisher Description

When Pico Iyer decided to go to Kyoto and live in a monastery, he did so to learn about Zen Buddhism from the inside, to get to know Kyoto, one of the loveliest old cities in the world, and to find out something about Japanese culture today -- not the world of businessmen and production lines, but the traditional world of changing seasons and the silence of temples, of the images woven through literature, of the lunar Japan that still lives on behind the rising sun of geopolitical power.

All this he did. And then he met Sachiko.

Vivacious, attractive, thoroughly educated, speaking English enthusiastically if eccentrically, the wife of a Japanese "salaryman" who seldom left the office before 10 P.M., Sachiko was as conversant with tea ceremony and classical Japanese literature as with rock music, Goethe, and Vivaldi. With the lightness of touch that made Video Night in Kathmandu so captivating, Pico Iyer fashions from their relationship a marvelously ironic yet heartfelt book that is at once a portrait of cross-cultural infatuation -- and misunderstanding -- and a delightfully fresh way of seeing both the old Japan and the very new.

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32 Reviews

3.5

Chaitanya Sethi

Created 5 months ago

“I found this book a week before I was supposed to travel to Japan, and I ended up taking it with me. It was the one of the best bookish decisions I have made in my life. Pico's book is an account that saccades between travelogue and memoir, set against a year in Kyoto where he had gone to pick up the tenets of Zen philosophy but ended up losing his heart to Sachiko, his now wife. Walking the streets of Kyoto carrying this in my bag, and reading passages from it as I sat in front of a window that looked upon the city; the emotional bond of that itself immediately inflated my sense of this book. But on top of that, it featured some breathtaking moments of romance, ones that could put Yash Raj Films to shame. I was reading other reviews on Goodreads and I was surprised to find that other readers found it pretentious and unbearable, more on account of how they perceived Pico. I am not aware of how he is in person so I am glad that I did not colour my reading with that impression. I mean, what is pretentious about this sentiment of falling in love - "Somehow the world has misted over as we talk, and time and space are gone: the world, I think, begins and ends on this small bench. And as we sit there, sometimes with her dainty pink umbrella unfurled, sometimes not, I pointing to the yellow trees, or the blue in the sky...". The book may have its failings, both, in the Zen part of it, that sounds heavy-handed and at times, like a diary entry gone too far, and also in the complicated morality of Pico falling for a married woman, but I found it, despite all, to be a touching account of the tiny little things that make you fall for someone. I am not one to feel a pang of romance when I read books but at many places in this book, I found myself touched by the overwhelming romance of it all. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Taking this book with me and reading it as I traveled through Japan was one of my better bookish decisions. Pico's writing, particularly in the sections covering his romance with Sachiko actually had me aching and pining in places. A solid 5 stars from my end.”

BAbeltin

Created about 1 year ago

Edie

Created over 1 year ago

“Reading Pico Iyer is like listening to the insights of a very bright friend. This friend shares his travels and wonderful adventures. Iyers wrote many books on different places, but mostly about Japan. You can tell he has a special affinity for the country and a fascination with Zen. In this particular book he moves to Kyoto to discover both traditions and contemporary life. Through his poetry readings, the author comes across the theme of “the lady and the monk”. In an interesting parallel, a great deal of the book centers on a local Japanese woman with whom he has a close relationship. He also encounters many foreigners seeking truth in Buddhism. Through these experiences Iyer learns about many different aspects of Japan.”

Mogu

Created about 2 years ago

Nahchey

Created about 2 years ago

About Pico Iyer

Pico Iyer has written nonfiction books on globalism, Japan, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, and forgotten places, and novels on Revolutionary Cuba and Islamic mysticism. He regularly writes about literature for The New York Review of Books; about travel for the Financial Times; and about global culture and the news for Time, The New York Times, and magazines around the world.