We are delighted to welcome Donald Richie, the eminent writer and cultural critic, longtime resident of Japan, and a major interpreter of Japanese culture to the West. To those familiar with Richie's writings on Japanese cinema-among them, authoritative books on Ozu and Kurosawa, and the seminal book he coauthored with Joseph L. Anderson, The Japanese Film: Art and Industry-the revelation of The Donald Richie Reader: 50 Years of Writing on Japan, a newly published anthology of his writings, will be his fiction and keenly observed essays on culture and daily life in Japan. Richie is one of the most graceful writers we have, but whether writing film criticism or cultural observations, behind his gentle delivery is a refreshingly honest critique. In the book there are "desultory analyses of social oddities and of gardens and architecture...Zen stories retold...portraits of people mundane and famous; and, peppered through it all, brutally honest reflections on the human frailties of being a not-so-accidental tourist. The humility of the outsider enables him to observe without feeling threatened or resorting to solipsistic (and cheap) comparisons to the West." (Publishers Weekly)Richie is currently working on a new book, A Hundred Years of Japanese Films.The Donald Richie Reader:50 Years of Writing on Japan, edited by Arturo Silva (Berkeley: Stone Bridge, $19.95), is sold in the Museum Store, and at the booksigning where everyone receives the 10% members discount.