Tokyo Vertigo

Rating:
Summary: . . . What?
Review: I thought this book was going to be about the underbelly of Tokyo. Boy was I wrong. The book is only the means for the author to vomit out verbose convoluted phrases on his perceptions on yhe different districts in Tokyo. There is absolutely no information on these districts.He treats them more like living things that suck away the lives of their inhabitants. That is fine, but why is that? The author never answeres this. He seems to be the type that likes listening to himself use big words repeatedly. Well he does that here, but writes them not speak them. The only good quality the book has is a decent description of the work by choreographer/dancer Tatsumi Hijikata. Don't read this book it is a waste of time and energy.

Rating:
Summary: extraordinary evocation of the extremes of Tokyo
Review: Tokyo Vertigo is part travel book, part hallucination. Stephen Barber takes the reader on an extraordinary journey through the myriad districts of contemporary Tokyo, from the neon nightscape of Shinjuku to the artificial Daiba Island in Tokyo Bay, and reinvents the city as he goes along, evoking its unique ferment of sex, consumerism, and rampant visual imagery. Free of the tired old cliches about Japanese culture (no Pokemon, no ikebana), Tokyo Vertigo captures the energy and extremity of Tokyo now, recognising that the city, even more than the book, is the effect of constant and delirious reinvention. Along with Roland Barthes's The Empire of Signs and Chris Marker's film Sunless, this is one of the few truly original and essential meditations on Tokyo by a Western visitor.