The cover refers to The Inland Sea as "a masterwork of travel fiction by the West's finest writer on Japan." I think it's misleading to call it a travel book even though Richie does take a trip through the islands of the Inland Sea between Osaka and Hiroshima. (It's only as I'm writing this review that I notice the word "fiction" in there.) Richie is more interested in trying to convey something about the Japanese spirit than about Japan; the folklore and sociological generalizations are far more vivid than the physical descriptions. Its tone often reminded me of Sebald's The Rings of Saturn. Richie's own peculiarities start to take over in the later pages, about the time he realizes that travel is really an attempt to find yourself.
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