The Legacy of Donald Richie
The following is part of Tokyo Journal’s Living Tribute to Donald Richie who passed away on February 19, 2013. Donald Richie’s contribution was originally printed in the January 1995 edition of the Tokyo Journal. It was excerpted from “Japan Journals 1947-2004” by Donald Richie (Stone Bridge Press. 2004). Donald Richie’s first visit to Japan took place in 1947. Since that time he became a celebrated film critic, author and composer, not to mention a journalist of many talents recording the changes of over half a century of life in Tokyo. Donald Richie contributed to the Tokyo Journal over the years and when asked about times in the nineties, Donald replied, “Frightening but exhilarating. I think everybody with a pencil should be out there taking notes.”
Some Autumn Days
Encounters with a world renowned sculptor, former ambassador and aged author in this excerpt from Donald Richie’s Japan Journals
On OCTOBER 18, 1982. At the conference, Isamu Noguchi, for the first time since I have known him, talked about himself. To be sure, he usually talks about his opinions, beliefs, etc., usually at length. But here he spoke of what it felt like to be him — of Japanese ancestry, born an American, back to Japan before the war, back to America, his work, then back to Japan after the war, then back and forth, back and forth. He spoke about what he discovered in Japan and in himself, talked about stone and rock.
Noguchi himself has become rock-like. He is veined and seamed and sits very still. As his outside has grown this patina, so his inside, his opinions and views, have softened, mellowed. It used to be that Noguchi’s ideas were the most adamantine thing about him. Abrasive. You could cut yourself on them. Not now. The rock speaks softly.
Later, the long day over, we have coffee and talk of the Stravinsky/Balanchine Orpheus for which he did costumes and sets. He complains that in doing everything over for its revival he had to make everything larger. The ballet had been designed for the City Center and not the big Lincoln Center. “It is really a chamber work. That is how I saw it too, with my little rocks. Now those little rocks are enormous so that they will be visible in all that space. A great mistake. Scale is one of the most important of all things and we violated our scale. No. I violated it. Balanchine and Stravinsky kept things the same. Mine was the part that had to give. I regret it.”
