SOURCE: Weyer, Martin Vander. “Japan Looking Sexy.” Spectator 276, no. 8753 (20 April 1996): 36.

In the following review of The Missionary and the Libertine, Weyer lauds Buruma's insight and intelligence but concludes that his journalistic essays lack the depth and reflection of his books.

The last time I bumped into Ian Buruma was at the Tory Party conference in Blackpool, where he was composing an anthropological sketch of the faithful for the benefit of Guardian readers. The first time I came across his name was in the mid-1980s when I was about to move to Tokyo: A Japanese Mirror, his guide to the modern Japanese psyche as revealed by popular culture, was one of the two books most strongly recommended to me as an introduction to that alien place.

The other, scholars will be horrified to know, was Shogun, James Clavell's brick-sized epic of samurai sword play, and a rattling good...