Kyoto

Christopher Stillman survives Vietnam, but his wife does not, nor anyone else he knows. If home is no longer the place to be at home, well, he’ll go elsewhere, and so travel brings him to the ancient Japanese capital, a site with plenty of safe, alien past for digging around in, and not much in the way of current interest. Here he carries on surviving with the occasional lecture on old Kyoto matters to audiences of the here and now, who may be indifferent to the past but who know what they find amusing in “blue-eyed” opinion. He’s busier with work as an extra for Eastern Films, who use him as exotic furnishing for gangster and porno flicks. Marilyn Mirikizawa, another far from home, has come to Kyoto in search of Japanese roots, and found that the roots were cut long ago. She needs a friend in this alien place, and the American lecturer seems the best prospect in a lean season, but Stillman flees from the warm threat of life, westward across the city. Their journeys lead to storied hills west of the old capital, where (poets say) autumn first touches earth. Stillman has made a place for Marilyn after all, in the only home he knows.