Wayne Lionel AponteBesprekingen

Memoirs written by “gaijin” who’ve lived in Japan tend to fall into two categories: the “floating world” odyssey involving varying degrees of success at getting up close and personal with the locals (mostly by male writers, with a recent infusion of bar hostesses joining in the bacchanal); or the tale of a more thoughtful anthropologist-style adventurer who tries to learn a traditional art or make a life in a remote village (mostly female, but some male). To my surprise and pleasure, Wayne Aponte’s YEAR OF NO MONEY IN TOKYO was a refreshing, if sobering, departure from the usual Westerner’s encounter with Japan. After resigning from a boring job selling English language courses to college students, the narrator discovers work is scarce in post-bubble Japan, and he settles in for a hungry lesson in self-knowledge that is an education to the reader as well.

From the start, Aponte shines the harsh light of reality on our culture’s romantic preconceptions of the country. For example, if you thought all Japanese women were sweet and submissive, meet Mamiko, his assigned roommate in a Tokyo guesthouse, whose rude self-absorption reminded me of too many of my own English students in Japan. Or how about the poignant Kumiko, one of the narrator’s mainstays during his dark months of unemployment, who is only looking for a man to take care of her, but ends up supporting first her husband who suffers a mental breakdown from overwork and then her American lover who seemed to promise what her husband could not? Kumiko’s wail of disillusionment when her “savior” lover confesses he needs a loan is one of the most memorable moments of the memoir. Her subsequent generosity is all the more touching because of it. A definite highlight of the book is Aponte’s portraits of his girlfriends, which give a fascinating glimpse into how various Japanese women deal with their frustrations with society’s restrictions.

Aponte definitely takes you on a tour of a Tokyo few tourists see. While I’ve read plenty of accounts of seedy encounters in hostess bars or hazing as part of the study of Japanese pottery or Zen, this narrator actually spends time in a Japanese jail after punching an acquaintance on a subway platform. Again, the brief encounters with his cellmates provide a glimpse into a hidden world of rebellion that humanizes the supposedly robotic Japanese. Not that Aponte isn’t critical of Japan’s self-generated myths about its purity and safety and its particular brand of racist treatment of foreigners of color. At times you do wonder why he stayed in the country, in spite of his stated desire to turn his Japan sojourn back into a “professional success story.”

Ultimately, after his jail time, he does reinvent himself and decides to return to his Harlem home for a visit. The last chapter of the book is an enlightening record of reverse culture shock. Aponte’s insights into the limited views of both his middle class and underclass African-American friends highlights the hard-won benefits of his own struggles with economic disadvantage and efforts at greater tolerance. The final portion of the memoir strikes a different note with a journalist’s catalog of Japanese cultural differences and list of lessons learned. However, this stylistic departure is smoothed over by the deeply personal and unflinchingly honest nature of the story as a whole.

While the more romantic depictions of a foreigner’s life in Japan have their charms, if you’re hankering for a taste of the real Japan, Aponte’s lean memoir is just the fare to satisfy your craving.

An African-American's life in Tokyo. This is a very personal take, giving his real experiences, which do not match up to the normal outside view of Japan.

It is a cautionary tale, here is an edcuated man with a good level of Japanes, but his lack of prudence in the good times leave him with nothing in the bad. From being a Player, wining and dining various women, he becomes dependent on them to keep his head above water.

This is a different ex-pat's tale, not the quick rich one, this is the one not often heard about, living in a dodgy guesthouse, suffering humilating job interviews, trying to survive in Tokyo.

His treatment by the Japanese is mixed, he is passed over for jobs on the grounds of his race, harrassed on the street, yet he is popular with the girls.

There is a lot of frustration here, built up by a sense of alientation. Though, his visit home also shows that he no longer fits in, he has moved away from Harlem. Tokyo, despite its failings, has given him seemingly more opportunities than home.

Ultimately, at times I felt my sympathy evaporating because the book was almost written too soon, the emotions are still very raw. I do understand some of his frustration, I have been a foreigner working in Asia, it does mess with your head.

His descriptions of life in Tokyo and of Japanese culture are particularly superficial - I don't get the feeling that his experience in Tokyo would be that different for any immigrant in any city in similar circumstances. Although he mentions his job hunting efforts, he doesn't give any sense of detail, or of time passing. Japanese & Tokyo life only gets brief mentions mainly as his experiences in English language bookshops. His journey is primarily internal. There's a brief overview of the Japanese recession, but nothing to really connect his experience with what is happening in the wider world around him.

The second failing, for an autobiography is, I think critical. At the end of the book, I still had no idea why he moved to Japan (he gives no indication that it was for a dream job or that visiting there was a long-standing ambition), how long he had been there, why he left/was fired from his job or why he couldn't go back home. At time he says it is because he didn't want to return poorer (i.e. lose face), but he gives the impression of not having been in Japan very long, that he didn't seem to been immersed in the culture or had bothered to learn the learn the language, so would it have been such a loss, except in minor monetary terms? There's no indication he came to Japan with a fortune or was pursuing the making of one, he seemed almost proud of his spendthrift ways while in employment. The emphasis on money and the spending and later getting of it looms large, the latter obviously so, and whether it is that which colours the whole book, I don't know. Other reviews have remarked on his treatment of women, and with them I can only agree, from a female perspective it seems thoroughly objectionable. However it seems to go deeper than that - every interaction whether with the women or even casual encounters with other men was cast with the feeling of a business transaction. He describes every meeting in terms of what the person can do for him.

The book is written from the perspective of several years later, which explains perhaps how some elements are skimmed over. You do feel however that in reaching his lowest point, he could so easily have avoided it - a combination of his own dangerous naivety and entitlement/arrogance seem to been as much a factor in his downfall as any racial or other discrimination. Just out of prison a lucky breaks lands him a well-paid job teaching English. Incidentally, having heard many stories of the exploitation of English teachers in Japan, he does seem to have been really lucky here. A fair proportion of the later part of the book is devoted to him actually grasping this opportunity and making good on his life. He does seem to have gained some maturity, repays his debts and applies himself to a previously despised job (I wonder how many teaching positions he applied for when 'desperate'). There's a brief section on a trip home in New York, and an incident I found ironic (although not highlighted by the author) - he complains of being made to feel uncomfortable as a Black man reading in public there, which exactly mirrors experiences in Tokyo.

A Year of No Money in Toyko can, at first, seem a bit perplexing; not because of the story or the writing, but because of the immediacy the reader is thrown into Aponte’s life in Japan. It’s not a slow immersion into a world that brought us the Geisha and the Samurai; it’s a quick dip into the cold waters of a Japanese society that presents itself on many different levels and ways of living that often contradict themselves, even to its own inhabitants.

In the beginning, you wonder, who is this guy? Telling his tales of his various ‘affairs’ with Japanese women who are with him for different reasons ranging from their role in society, their unfulfilled marriages or their enjoyment of being able to spend their time with someone of his intellect and personality. As time progresses, Japan sinks into a recession and the slow realization that poverty could be a reality, we begin to see Aponte’s true personality begin to come through.

Strong and independent, the immensity of his situation begins to reveal things that the author must learn to accept as sometimes his flaws and other times, his strengths. The true meanings of his relationships surface in a lot of different ways. When he was successful, he was more than happy to oblige these women with his company and pampering in return for their companionship. As his ordeal continues and he becomes practically homeless and unable to feed himself, he finds that many of these companions are willing to take care of him and/or help him in ways that at first he almost wants to refuse, and then accept, then almost expect in some ways. Companionship, human relations and vulnerability began to take on a whole new meaning.

A Year is a refreshing mixture of travelogue, memoir and a reality check on Japan today. This book does remind the reader of Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London. However, the story doesn’t focus just on the role of experiencing poverty in a foreign land. It goes further, reminiscent of Alan Booth’s travel stories, in which the Japan we are shown in the West is pushed aside, and we go behind the thick curtain into a society that is filled with fear, prejudice, chauvinism and the role of a foreigner within this system.

The most interesting parts are when the writer goes beyond trying to convey his feelings and just gives the reader moments that carry more weight than explanation could do justice. At one point, while accepting the assistance of a lady-friend, he goes into the bathroom and, looking in the mirror, raises a question concerning his father. Another time, he considers asking the return of an expensive watch he had given as a gift sometime earlier. As time goes by we begin to see Aponte’s survival mode begin to take charge of his decisions.

Time spent in a jail cell seems to be the turning point for the book. The author slowly begins to understand what a positive attitude can do, begins to have hope for his circumstances and switches less out of a ‘survival mode’ and more into a state of mind that this time in his life, though temporary, can be seen as a learning experience of perseverance. He slowly starts to alter his focus not on economic comfort, but economic security, a decision we see put to action as he works as much as possible once he lands a job as a teacher.

The greatest part of the book, and what I see as its strongest writing, is toward the end. He returns to where he grew up, the old neighborhood, and we began to see who the author really is. We are allowed into his head, no longer a foreigner, but as a black man in America. Yet, we see that despite his success, because of restrictions by society (and his own people), he remains a foreigner in many respects. We see that his view of success in Tokyo was not just one of economics, but a much deeper struggle to show that he can rise above what he saw as a childhood that offered little possibility of growth, success…or escape. His struggle between the new him and his old life, is apparent not in what he says, but what he doesn’t say during this time.

I also say that this part of the book is the most lacking. Not because of what it said or portrayed, but because once he allows you to dig deeper into his past, his values and the role that his growing up as a lower-middle class African-American, you begin to see that there was an internal struggle, during his time being down and out in Tokyo, that the author was not willing, or able, to consider navigating.

As a reader, I wanted more. I wanted to know what he meant when he looked in that mirror and thought of his father. What it means to not be able to survive on his own not just as a man, or a foreigner, but as a black man from New York. He delves into it a bit, being black in Japan, talking about finding a barber to cut his hair in a land of straight-haired people and the role of the African-American on Japanese television. However, as his past and present collide, it makes you wonder, is being a successful black man in Japan easier than in America, or will he always be a foreigner, even in his own land?

I wanted to know more. Where did his past affect his decisions, ignite his passion and excite his fears as he struggled with his day-to-day existence? How does this affect the way he treated the women he was with? What was the fear of poverty really a struggle against? How much of his past weighed heavily on his ideals of what success really signifies?

Then I think, maybe this isn’t a bad thing at all. I suppose in a lot of ways, the sign of a great book is that when you finish it…you are longing for more.

Vincent Yanez
Author of It Doesn’t Matter Which Road You Take and Einstein’s Shutter

I too was troubled by Aponte's attitude to the Japanese women he used sexually and financially in the first half of the book. In the end, I put the book down wondering why he had stayed in Japan - the story seemed to have communicated a lot about a rather idiosyncratic method of repentance and subsequent self-improvement but very little about the circumstances that meant the author wanted to carry on living in an apparently hostile environment. The passage about Aponte's return to the USA for a brief visit and a stay with his mother were intriguing and I hope that perhaps he will tell us more about his upbringing in future writing.½

Not my sort of thing and I can only echo the views below. Mysogynistic and self absorbed. - Definition of a man!

I imagined this book as a sort of modern day "Down and Out in Paris and London" by George Orwell, or something like Patrick Leigh Fermor's books walking across Europe in the 30s to Istanbul. Well, I couldn't have been more wrong.

First of all, there's not really no money, as when he loses his job, he bums the money for his rent off the Japanese girl he is sleeping with, finds another girl to sleep with in exchange for food.... You get the picture.

Then it isn't really a year of no money, since the loss of old job (selling English language courses) and "finding himself" as an English language teacher are all done with in the period of a year.

A better summary might be "black stud screws his way out of poverty and learns to live with himself afterwards". It's not at first obvious that the American author is black, but eventually his attitude to women brings to mind obvious unpleasant stereotypes of black men.

He considers his new profession as teacher (which he previously despised) as the best thing that happened to him, and provides us with a list of 11 key points which now guide his life including:

* the error of defining success by work and possessions
* the benefits of reinventing yourself
* the advantages of delayed gratification
* the disadvantages of unemotional and unintimate (sic) sex
* the value of monogamous relationships
* the power of pep talks.

There are some interesting views of Japanese life, but it's hard to know how accurate or insightful they are when the rest is so crass.

I didn't like the book and I didn't like the author, even in his newly invented self.½

This book troubles me, in so many ways.

Aponte displays his gifts as a writer from the first few pages. But his gifts better suit the essayist--nay, the polemicist--than the writer of a memoir

If a good story balances both plot and character, then a good memoir tips the scale toward character. Alas, Aponte never quite captures the real humanity of those about whom he writes.

He describes the people who weave in and out of his life with great skill and economy. But they appear simply as actors who perform a functional role, and move on.

Aponte never really shows much sympathy for his fellow man or woman. We see them in one dimension--the women who pick up the restaurant tab in exchange for sex, the English-teacher colleagues who drink to forget, the fellow uptowners who stare longingly at a man enjoying a too-large meal. There is much colour, but little ambiguity, in the way he paints his characters.

It does them a disservice. Having lived in Japan for many years, and having a Japanese partner, I would suggest that Aponte's girlfriends had much more complex motives that simple food-for-sex. People who put themselves in the deliberately difficult position of language teacher and cutural ambassador, do so for many reasons--some good, some bad, all interesting. We come away understanding little of the mixed emotions which drive these characters.

Perhaps the person to whom Aponte does the greatest disservice, is himself. Many fellow reviewers deplore his treatment of women in the first part of the book. I fear that his simple description of events, indeed, does paint him in a very bad light. If we were to get a sense of his own feelings for these women, or discover some telling details in the way he interacted with them, then we may find the author a much more sympathetic character, and see the women less as victims.

Perhaps Aponte doesn't actually have much sympathy for himself. The last section of the book adopts a moralistic tone. One in which the narrator deplores the earlier version of himself for being down-and-out. He, of all people, should know that life not so cut and dried. And when the author touts one of the benefits of his new-found celibacy as preserving his strength through conserving semen...well, I cringed.

There are much better-told tales of being down-and-out in Japan, which capture the precarious position of the gaijin who has lost some fo his priveleged status. As an alternative, I recommend Angry White Pajamas by Robert Twigger.

That said, my best wishes go to the author for his tenacity. It was a tough experience to survive. And he's still living it!

This book deals with the life of the author (a black American man then in his 20s) who becomes unemployed in Japan in the middle of the Japanese financial troubles in 1995. My first reaction when skimming through this book, after I received it as part of Early Reviewers, was that I was going to get rather annoyed with the author, and especially his seemingly somewhat casual attitude towards his ‘girlfriends’. However, I found that this did not interfere with my reading of the book, which although not that memorable, did provide an interesting slant on both US and Japanese attitudes towards money, jobs, colour, the other sex and quite a few other topics. Also, in the end, the author came over as a bit more likeable than I had feared from my quick skim.

It’s interesting to read this account of a year of unemployment in 1995 in the light of the current financial position, and I guess that was part of the thinking of its publication in 2009.

I’m not sure that I would agree with the description on the front dust jacket flap calling it a ‘beautiful and intelligently written travel memoir of unprecedented insight’ - this seems to be overselling it a bit. Also I am not sure whether ‘his book of creative nonfiction will inspire all people who have encountered personal obstacles by showing them that they can recover, even under the most difficult conditions’ - he may have been in some kind of personal ‘abyss’, but I couldn’t help feeling that in the global scheme of things he was not really that badly off being intelligent and American and with the option of returning to the USA even if he didn’t really want to.

So, in summary, an interesting book to read, though not one I will probably reread, and to my mind a book to perhaps borrow from the library rather than pay £14 or so (for the hardback).½

I have had to step back a little from this volume of essay memoir and try to look at it with less prejudice, as I found quite early on that I didn’t like their writer at all. I didn’t like what appeared to be his misuse of the women in his life, I didn’t like his incapacity to engage emotionally with a woman. However, I was interested in what he might have to say about the life of a foreigner, in a land he was not born to, at a time of economic crisis. And I hoped he would have something to say that might be of use to almost anyone now, when we are all living in such economically constrained times.

I was interested to read how he believed he was perceived by his host nation at this time, how that had changed because he was no longer an economically productive member of society. The only people who appeared not to judge him at this time were some of the women, who because their culture had trained them to be alert to the male ego would pass him their purses when it came to paying for the bill he could not afford, in order that he did not lose face.

Having downsized his accommodation and reduced his social activity, Aponte finally began to find work when he put the effort in to do so. Having a means of earning a living, and realising he didn’t have to have all those accoutrements he had previously believed vital to his existence, he undergoes a period of living to work, even at times taking on 2-3 jobs in order to liberate himself from debt (including repaying all the loans from is ‘girlfriends’) and provide him with a secure and comfortable bank balance from which to order his life.

Ultimately I felt the writer did grow. He learned perhaps to respect himself for the changes he had undergone in order to improve his circumstance, to respect those who had helped him and taught him, not necessarily by intent (as with his women friends), and he was using the knowledge he had gained, from a year as an out of work foreigner, to change his life into something he felt was more worthy. In the end I didn’t find this so much about life as a foreigner, but the growth of an immature individual to one of maturity. It could have occurred in his own land, he needn’t have been in Japan for it to have happened.

And what did I learn about Japan? That the difference between those who have a successful life and those who are floundering can be a lot slimmer than in many other nations. Prosperity isn’t necessarily about the size of the space you live in or where you live. It is perhaps more about how you can participate in the culture you live in, weather you have the money to do so. It is very much a gift culture, where the giving and receiving of gifts is a constant part of the tradition, and the formality and being able to do so is part of that participation.

I’m not sure that Aponte’s stories of the women in Japan can be accepted as representative. Those he discusses seem to be almost as emotionally crippled as he himself was – although that may be the nature of such relationships. Whether married or single, they were manipulating the relationships they undertook in an almost cynical fashion. Whilst Aponte acknowledges that there is less violence in Japan than in many developed countries, he suggests that women have to put up with as much if not more sexual discrimination, innuendo and misuse than the women in other cultures.

I also think that were a young man reviewing this collection of essays, this would be a very different review than it is, being reviewed by a middle-aged woman, in certain circumstances I think this unavoidable!½

04 May 2009 - LibraryThing Early Reviewers programme

This was in my Bonus Batch from LTER

Aponte, a Black American man who has been living in Japan for a number of years, messes up his life such that his only recourse is to sit down at the typewriter and write about his experiences of being poor and unemployed in Tokyo. Gradually he re-establishes his life and work ethic, and draws conclusions from the growing process he experiences.

I was a bit non-plussed by this book at the beginning. I thought it was going to be one of those books where somebody undergoes an experience on purpose (Julie and Julia, Nickeled and Dimed, One Red Paperclip...) and was then plunged into the author's chaotic and selfish descent into a life on the edge of homelessness. Admitting that this descent is caused by his own profligacy, short-termism and obsession with women, he proceeds to live off four different women, taking favours, money, meals and loans from each in turn in order to keep his head above water. While this is resourceful, it doesn't make for very pleasant reading, and some of the descriptive writing about the women is a little "strong" for maybe the average reader. He seeks to explain himself, and as he then starts to find "salvation" through hard work, we see his mental processes and interests change and become more conventionally mature.

Once you get past this rather grubby life that he's embraced at first then seeks to escape, there are some interesting points made about Japan (especially the differences between the Japan of the tourist and the Japan of the locals, and the way that the lack of interest in the "real" Japan from the rest of the world helps the Japanese retain their self-image of safety etc) and about the reasons non-Japanese people go and stay there, in the portraits of his fellow language-school workers. The view broadens out from the purely personal to a more wide and interesting canvas. When he goes back to his native New York for a visit, some good points are made about culture shock, about not fitting properly into either culture for at least a while.

While I am pretty sure the author would not like his reviewers to pause too long on the issues of him being a Black American in Japan, rather than just an American in Japan, he doesgive some interesting vignettes, examining his viewing of the portrayal of Black people on Japanese television, believing he must acknowledge all people he meets of his own colour in case they feel he is ignoring them, and his anger at being congratulated in a book shop for being a Black man reading a book. This does give an extra dimension to the usual "out of culture" books that exist in the genre.

Set in the mid-1990s recession in Japan, there are some interesting paralleles with today's financial crisis and i'm wondering if that was why this book was published now - it's a useful hook to hang it on. There's even a theme about those in financial straits turning on the outsiders in their society, which we've seen in the UK with the protests about non-UK workers.

I found this book interesting, and it's certainly brave to be that unremittingly honest about your ways before you mend them. It was a short book, and needed some editing work (this was not as far as I could see an ARC, but it had some repeated passages and messy tenses). I can't say I loved it, but it certainly improved as it went along.