Angry White Pyjamas
Published on 1. February 2007
Book
Paperback/Softback
320 pages
978-0-7538-0858-0 (ISBN)
Description
A brilliant and captivating insight into the bizarre nature of contemporary Japan.
Adrift in Tokyo, teaching giggling Japanese highschool girls how to pronounce Tennyson correctly, Robert Twigger came to a revelation about himself: he'd never been fit. In a bid to escape the cockroach infestation and sweaty squalor of a cramped apartment in Fuji Heights, Twigger sets out to cleanse his body and his mind. Not knowing his fist from his elbow the author is sucked into the world of Japanese martial arts, and the brutally demanding course of budo training taken by the Tokyo Riot Police, where any ascetic motivation soon comes up against blood-stained dogis and fractured collarbones.
In Angry White Pyjamas Robert Twigger skilfully blends the ancient with the modern - the ultra-traditionalism, ritual and violence of the dojo (training academy) with the shopping malls, nightclubs and scenes of everyday Tokyo life in the twenty-first century - to provide an entertaining and captivating glimpse of contemporary Japan.
Adrift in Tokyo, teaching giggling Japanese highschool girls how to pronounce Tennyson correctly, Robert Twigger came to a revelation about himself: he'd never been fit. In a bid to escape the cockroach infestation and sweaty squalor of a cramped apartment in Fuji Heights, Twigger sets out to cleanse his body and his mind. Not knowing his fist from his elbow the author is sucked into the world of Japanese martial arts, and the brutally demanding course of budo training taken by the Tokyo Riot Police, where any ascetic motivation soon comes up against blood-stained dogis and fractured collarbones.
In Angry White Pyjamas Robert Twigger skilfully blends the ancient with the modern - the ultra-traditionalism, ritual and violence of the dojo (training academy) with the shopping malls, nightclubs and scenes of everyday Tokyo life in the twenty-first century - to provide an entertaining and captivating glimpse of contemporary Japan.
Reviews / Votes
A frantic, very funny, urban quest * Mail on Sunday * Wonderfully oddball ... Here is a cult book all right, which could do for Japan and the martial arts what Hornby did for Highbury and the football terraces * Guardian * His fine eye for eccentricities makes this an entertaining travelogue * Observer * A rattling good yarn and very funny into the bargain * Independent on Sunday * His explanation of how to come to terms with intense pain should be read to every footballer who has ever writhed about in agony after a kick on the shin... It is a clever, enthralling book * Daily Mail * Brilliant ... everyone should read it -- Tony Parsons * Late Review * This is a splendidly written adventure, something sane at last on the craziness of martial arts * Independent on Sunday * Poetry in motion -- Sue Townsend * Sunday Times * Communicates the existential purity of his elective regime with irrepressible passion ... it also has the unmistakable stamp of authentic experience * Daily Telegraph * A book of unexpected brilliance. It is subtle, funny, stimulating and original - a rites-of-passage story, an explanation of an alien culture, and an inspiring work of philosophy -- Patrick French Twigger vividly captures the wince-inducing physical and emotional trials endured by those who would wear the black belt. But he also offers a rare insight in aikido's peculiarly Darwinian group dynamic and how it fits into modern Japanese society. After this marvellously insightful account I will snigger no more at Steven Segal's po-faced chop-sockey * Literary Review * The most intriguing sports book ever to win the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award * Daily Mail * A frantic, very funny, urban quest. -- Simon Garfield * Mail on Sunday * A book of unexpected brilliance. It is subtle, funny, stimulating and original - a rites-of-passage story, an explanation of an alien culture, and an inspiring work of philosophy -- Patrick French His fine eye for eccentricities makes this an entertaining travelogue * The Observer * A rattling good yarn and very funny into the bargain -- Tim Hulse * Independent on Sunday * This is a splendidly written adventure, something sane at last on the craziness of martial arts * Independent on Sunday * His explanation of how to come to terms with intense pain should be read to every footballer who has ever writhed about in agony after a kick on the shin... It is a clever, enthralling book -- Ian Wooldridge * Daily Mail * Brilliant ... everyone should read it -- Tony Parsons * Late Review * Wonderfully oddball ... Here is a cult book all right, which could do for Japan and the martial arts what Hornby did for Highbury and the football terraces -- Frank Keating * Guardian * Poetry in motion -- Sue Townsend * Sunday Times * Communicates the existential purity of his elective regime with irrepressible passion ... it also has the unmistakable stamp of authentic experience * Daily Telegraph * Twigger vividly captures the wince-inducing physical and emotional trails endured by those who would wear the black belt. But he also offers a rare insight in aikido's peculiarly Darwinian group dynamic and how it fits into modern Japanese society. After this marvellously insightful account I will snigger no more at Steven Segal's po-faced chop-sockey -- Ben Farrington * Literary Review * The most intriguing sports book ever to win the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award * Daily Mail *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Orion Publishing Co
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 199 mm
Width: 131 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
252 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7538-0858-0 (9780753808580)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
ROBERT TWIGGER has won the Newdigate Prize for poetry, the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award and the Somerset Maugham Award. His twelve books have been translated into over twenty languages and cover both fiction and non-fiction, memoir and travel. He spent a year training with the Tokyo riot police, crossed Canada in a homemade birchbark canoe and was the first person to traverse entirely on foot the Egyptian Great Sand Sea. His quarterly comic of memoir and travel, This Simple Life, is available at roberttwigger.com