Confucius Lives Next Door: What Living in the East Teaches Us About Living in the West

t.r. reid

"Fascinating...clearly stated, interesting and provoking.... A plainspoken account of living in Asia." -- San Francisco Chronicle

Anyone who has heard his weekly commentary on NPR knows that T. R. Reid is trenchant, funny, and deeply knowledgeable reporter and now he brings this erudition and humor to the five years he spent in Japan--where he served as The Washington Post's Tokyo bureau chief. He provides unique insights into the country and its 2,500-year-old Confucian tradition, a powerful ethical system that has played an integral role in the continent's "postwar miracle."

Whether describing his neighbor calmly asserting that his son's loud bass playing brings disrepute on the neighborhood, or the Japanese custom of having students clean the schools, Reid inspires us to consider the many benefits of the Asian Way--as well as its drawbacks--and to use this to come to a greater understanding of both Japanese culture and America.

Genres nonfictionjapantravelasiahistoryphilosophyasian literatureculturalmemoirsociology

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1999

This edition

Format: 288 pages, Paperback
Published: March 28, 2000 by Vintage
ISBN: 9780679777601
ASIN: 0679777601
Language: English

About the author

t.r. reid

T.R. Reid is a reporter, documentary film correspondent and author. He is also a frequent guest on NPR's Morning Edition. Through his reporting for The Washington Post, his syndicated weekly column, and his light-hearted commentary from around the world for National Public Radio, he has become one of America's best-known foreign correspondents.

Reid, a Classics major at Princeton University, served as a naval officer, taught, and held various positions before working for The Washington Post. At the Post he covered congress and four Presidential election campaigns, and was chief of the Post's London and Tokyo bureaus. He has also taught at Princeton University and the University of Michigan. His experiences in Japan led him to write Confucius Lives Next Door: What Living in the East Teaches Us About Living in the West, which argued that Confucian values of family devotion, education and long-term relations, that still permeate East Asian societies, contributed to their social stability.

He is now the Post's Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief. A 2007 Kaiser Family Foundation media fellow in health, he is a member of the board of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless and the University of Colorado Medical School.