There’s often a mystery about why some books last and others fade from public awareness. That certainly applies in this case, because for some reason this reviewer fails to understand, A Zen Romance fails to come up in talk of best novels about Japan. Shamefully it was not even included in WiK’s initial listing of Kyoto books. Yet the book is an absolute gem.

Imagine The Lady and the Monk written from the Lady’s viewpoint. Imagine too that the induction into Zen is laced with lascivious monks and a rich sense of humour. Add to that an astonishing facility with language and you have something of the measure of Deborah Bollinger Boehm’s memoir. Set in 1970, it’s written from the perspective of the 1990s when the book came out – five years after Pico Iyer’s The Lady and the Monk.

The story follows a well-worn path. An innocent outsider arrives in Kyoto, finds a room by chance in a subtemple, and is attracted to ‘the supernal serenity of the Sodo’ (meditation hall). As she grows to love the ‘aesthetics and atmosphere and aesthetics’, the reader is taken with her to learn about life inside a Zen monastery. Along the way there are side excursions into the tea ceremony, the firing of a Raku bowl, and even a visit to David Kidd‘s house in Ashiya.

By the end of her stay in Kyoto the heroine has learned a lot about Zen and is changed by the experience. The twist here is that, unusually, the main character is a sensual female with a fascination for Japanese males, particularly monks – though remarkably she remains a virgin throughout. The romance of the title is thus both for the Gion-located monastery of the humorously named Zenzenji, as well as for the monkish figures who attract her attention.

But the storyline is almost incidental, since centre stage is taken by the brilliance of the language. There are moments when you want to put down the book and applaud the virtuoso writing. Serpentine sentences of seductive prose sit alongside sensuous lists of food, clothing, smells, tastes and sights, all depicted with a dash of irony. Eisai, founder of Rinzai Zen, is called aptly but archly, ‘the avatar of tannic enlightenment’.

In keeping with the title, romance colours the writing throughout. A Kyoto early morning is described as ‘a glorious abalone dawn, pearlescent pink and blue with a river of silver along the horizon, like spilled mercury from the thermometers of hypochondrical gods.’ The similes, strikingly original, always seem to hit the mark, as when on the edge of sexual excitement the heroine feels like ‘a cabbage leaf in a rushing river, powerless to stop the romantic momentum.’

If the command of language is impressive, the range of vocabulary is astounding. Terpsichorean, ligneus, kelpie, eidetic, burlap, nacreous, vermiculate, cenobite, kibble, sigmoid flexure, supraliminal, emphaloskepsis – words tumble off the page as if out of a dictionary, yet such is the sumptuous nature of the prose that none of it feels forced. On the contrary the sheer bravado skill bears testimony to a master writer. In an explosively erotic first chapter (which surely deserves renown as one of the best openings ever), the panty-less heroine is ravished by a kimono-clad monk on the floor of the meditation chamber (‘our bodies stuck together like caramel apples’) – only for it to be revealed afterwards as a dream.

Rather than austere and martial, as most people find monastical life, the heroine regards it as ‘a constant voluptuous treat for the senses’. What’s more, it’s a ‘cosmic cookie jar, filled with everything I wanted in those days: beauty, serenity, simplicity, wisdom, ritual, mystery, style, and the company of fascinating men.’ Her tale of discovery is laced with Zen quotes, Zen insights and Zen witticisms – ‘What is the sound of one hand waving goodbye?’ she quips as she takes her leave at the end.

And so the mystery remains: how did this book disappear from the shelves? Was it poor marketing? The female perspective? The humour? The lack of earnestness towards Zen? And what of Deborah Boehm – Wikipedia reports that though she followed a career as a writer, she only wrote one other book. For myself I found this one such a triumph of fine writing that like Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets, I started reaching for the best compliment I could think of – this book made me want to become a better writer.

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Review
“A highly entertaining, vital and utterly convincing account of the author’s immersion in the world of Zen.” — Lucien Stryk, author of The Awakened Self
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“A triple quest–artistic, erotic and humanely curious–that no serious Zen student should ignore. The tale is funny, too.” — Janwillem Van de Wetering, author of The Japanese Corpse
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“Boehm is one of the wittiest observers of the Japanese scene that I have read.”–Ian Buruma, New York Review of Books
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“Sometimes sharp and sometimes delicate, sometimes meditative and sometimes sensual, … always beautifully written.” — Edward Seidensticker, author of Low City, High City
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“The most delectable travel account of the area [Kyoto] that I’ve read.” — Pico Iyer, Kansai Time Out