Wayne Lionel Aponte

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.… (mehr)

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.… (mehr)

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.… (mehr)

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… (mehr)