Bernard Rudofsky (1905–1988)

'A beautifully illustrated, immensely readable and endlessly fascinating study'-New York Times

'A thoroughly captivating book which should not be overlooked'-Library Journal

'A personal, witty, caustice and cantankerous essay...hilarious and always delightful...a triumph of the art of book design and production'-Women's Wear Daily

'The book is a revalation...its appeal is equally to the eye and to the mind'-John Barkham Reviews

'The Kimono Mind is a maginficent book entertaining and educational'-Best Sellers

'Of all the contradictiory intelligence we have on foreign peoples, that on the Japanese is the most contradictory. Cliches utterly fail us' Frenchmen are frivolous, Italians are lazy, but what shall we make of the Japanese? They are at once geniuses and copycats, aesthetes and vulgarians: their politeness is as exquisite as their rudeness, their wisdom often indistinguishable from stupidity.'

So writes Bernard Rudofsky in The Kimono Mind, an appreciative and unsparing look at Japan by an unusually perceptive and intelligent traveler and student of life and human nature, who lived for two years with the Japanese, far from the tourist route. Mr. Rudofsly is at his happiest when he describes the modern Japanese ministering to their immemorial conceits, watching the ease with which they keep afloat in an atmosphere of total ambiguity. Surveying the wreckage of their glorious culture and the giddy civilization they are building on it, he observes, 'Anybody who wants to study Americanization had better go to Japan these days.'

Austrian-born Bernard Rudofsky has been living intermittently in New York since 1935. His books reflect persuasions gained during more than half a century of worldwide travels and residence in a dozen countries. Architect, engineer, critic and a Ford, Fulbright, and Guggenheim Fellow, Dr. Rudofsky has held professorships in art and architecture here and abroad. His books include Architecture Without Architects, The Prodigious Builders, Streets for People, The Unfashionable Human Body, and Now I Lay Me Down To Eat.

Cover photo by Kichisaburo Anzai.

Cover design by the author.

Contents

Advertsement
The initiation
Kimonology
Guidemanship
Ladies last
A house for the summer
Hedonism for the destitute
On language
An appetite for rice
Train travel
Taste by edict
Forbidden directions
Postscript
Text references… (mere)

Bernard Rudofsky, best known for Architecture Without Architects, is one of my favorite authors not only for the subjects he tackled (vernacular architecture, the pedestrian realm, Japan, fashion) but especially for the way he created books as a careful balance of the visual and the verbal. His books are not just text accompanied by photographs and drawings; they are the two working together, conveying information in concert with each other. The more I blog, write, and photograph, the more I aspire to have words and images work together like Rudofsky, here and in his other books.… (mere)