books:

	The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, & Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient Sheridan Prasso, 2005 - 437 pages average customer review:based on 38 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Few Westerners escape the images, expectations and misperceptions that lead us to see Asia as exotic, sensual, decadent, dangerous, and mysterious. Despite ? and because of ? centuries of East-West interaction, the stereotypes of Western literature, stage, and screen remain pervasive icons: the tea-pouring, submissive, sexually available geisha girl; the steely cold dragon lady dominatrix; as well as the portrayal of the Asian male as effeminate and asexual. These "Oriental" illusions color our relations and relationships in ways even well-respected professional "Asia hands" and scholars don't necessarily see.

The Asian Mystique lays out a provocative challenge to see Asia and Asians as they really are, with unclouded, deeroticized eyes. It traces the origins of Western stereotypes in history and in Hollywood, examines the phenomenon of ?yellow fever,' then goes on a reality tour of Asia's go-go bars, middle-class homes, college campuses, business districts, and corridors of power, providing intimate profiles of women's lives and vivid portraits of the human side of an Asia we usually mythologize too well to really understand. It strips away our misconceptions and stereotypes, revealing instead the fully dimensional human beings beyond our usual perceptions. The Asian Mystique is required reading for anyone with interest in or interaction with Asia or Asian-origin people, as well as any serious student or practicioner of East-West relations.

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Jam Packed With Asian Truths

One of the attributes I look for when reading non-fiction is "how much do I learn from the book?" With this volume, the reader could pick any four or five pages of text and discover more new information than by reading another entire book on the same subject. Throw away the rose colored glasses people. This first-hand, no-nonsense immersion in Asian culture and life is written by a very good woman journalist. She gained entry into what Western Culture has deemed "the Asian mystique" where most western men would not even be permitted to set their shoeless sock covered feet. One of the author's colleagues that had lived in and covered Japan for decades warned her that he had never been invited inside a Japanese home. As a woman, the author of this tome was practically made an honorary member of many Asian families. The women, who appear so exotic, mysterious and inscrutable in the eyes of western males, were delighted to talk about the real Asian culture with another woman.
When I pick up a new book, especially a four hundred page one like this, I sometimes open it in the middle, often where there might be some photographs and start reading at random. Once I did that process with this volume, I was hooked, returned to the book's beginning and knew that I wasn't going to get to bed without "knocking the length" out of the rest of the volume before dawn. There is literally so much enlightening information in this text that it is almost overwhelming and quickly begins to open one's eyes to the reality as opposed the almost universal myth of Asian Mystery.
The Orient mystique has been mis-reported and Romanized in the western world since Marco Polo. Hollywood has only expanded the myth almost beyond recognition. In my own case growing up in the mid-western United States where the only Asians we ever saw were the ones running the local Chinese restaurant, I fell in love with Asia when I first saw "The World of Susie Wong." The fact I was an artist-photographer type practically guaranteed that I would fall victim to that exotic, erotic, glamorized portrayal of Hong Kong. Now International social service organizations, companies, individuals and even governments who know a good thing when they see it, continue the myth. In San Francisco's China Town, during the 1930's in order to attract more tourists during the tough Depression Times, the local "tour guides had to work even harder to keep the dollars coming in. So they turned Chinatown into the `wicked Orient,' spinning tales of secret underground world of drugs, gambling halls, and prostitution, where Chinese and white girls alike were enslaved, according to Iris Chang's `The Chinese in America.' The Chinese built fake opium dens and leper colonies for white tourists--who were both horrified and thrilled to have their stereotypes confirmed."
"In New York during the same period, tour guides warned visitors to hold hands `for safely' as they walked down Mott Street, and paid Chinese residents to stage tension-filled dramas including knife fights between `opium crazed` men over a prostitute. In reality, however, the Chinatown neighborhoods of the 1930's were becoming safer. But selling the images of violence, sex and underworld mystery is what played to Western tourists.
"Casting Asia as sexual and dangerous is what has drawn the eye of the West to the East for centuries."
It would be impossible for me to even begin to convey all the fascinating insights that Ms. Prasso has packed into this wonderfully enlightening non-fiction book. A minor story that I found interesting was the trial of "real-life French diplomat Bernard Bouriscot, who, when posted to China in the 1960's and enraptured with his own fantasies of exotic Asia, took a Chinese lover (who then spied on him). The relationship lasted, incredibly, for eighteen years without Bouriscot knowing his lover was a man. The Chinese man, Shi Pei Pu, was able to manipulate Bouriscot sexually--usually in the dark--into thinking he was a woman, and the Frenchman accepted the differences as `Oriental'." I won't give away how this happened but the book describes the various French doctors' testimony to "how" during "the espionage trial of the two in the 1980's." Anyone who has seen the play or movie "Madame Butterfly" must have wondered about how this could happen and probably just figured it was good fiction?
If a person only reads one book on the subject of Asian Mystique, this is one of the best, if not the best. Be prepared to have your rose-colored eyeglasses cleaned and your Asian fantasies dashed.

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This book will hurt the hearts of asian women and white men.

This is probably the most truthful book yet; the truth hurts and attacks the heart. its no wonder this book is so controversial and given low rating by asian women and white men. As an asian man, i totally agree with everything the author has said... asians are still mysterious in the eyes of the west. I wish i was given a dollar everytime a white person asked me if i was chinese/filipino/japanese. NO! I was born in AMERICA! I was RAISED IN AMERICA! I served in the U.S. navy. My dad served in the U.S. Navy for 25 years. Anyone who equates american as white and black needs to wake up and stop watching HOLLYWOOD crap.

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Uncomfortable truths

There is something about Asian women. It is one of those taboo subjects, like why African athletes dominate certain sports, that everyone is aware of but no one wants to talk about, for fear of breaching that all-important barrier of political correctness and possibly finding themselves on the wrong side. It all boils down to uncomfortable truths, things that are even though we don't want them to be. We would like to believe that race is not an issue, in both love and war, even though it often is.

Sheridan Prasso deserves full props for challenging this dangerous subject. In "The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls & Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient", she honestly attempted to examine the ideal of the Asian woman as a sexual object, both historically and in modern times. She half-succeeded, and half-failed, but that is only to be expected. The issue is not so easy as to be simply encapsulated in a single book, and we all bring our own viewpoint to such a tense subject, especially those of us who are are Asian ourselves or involved with Asian women, and find ourselves either villains or heroes by Prasso's standards.

The first part of the book is an analysis of Asian women through the lens of Western media and history. She examines the relationship between Asia and sex that has existed since the time of first contact between the two societies. Here she lays out some uncomfortable truths for all of us, demonstrating how Asian women have been portrayed in Western culture for years as a sequence of stereotypes, either the Dragon Lady or the submissive Geisha Girl. Unfortunately, this is the weakest part of the book, as it is clear that Prasso has come to her analysis opinion first and sought only the evidence to support her claim. While she speaks of "Madame Butterfly" and "Full Metal Jacket", she ignores Oliver Stone's "Heaven and Earth". This section is also rife with factual errors, which are so blatant that one is tempted to dismiss her observations out of hand. It would be easy to do. She made a mistake as to who Lady Mariko's husband was in "Shogun", so we don't need to believe anything she says, right?

But then comes the second part of the book, which is a powerhouse. Prasso steps off the stage, and allows the women of Asia to speak for themselves. Here is when you begin to understand that Prasso is a journalist, not a researcher, and her true strength is in giving a voice to others who may not otherwise be heard. She assembles an amazing collection of interviews, from all walks of life. A Japanese woman divorcing her American husband, disillusioned and yet not destroyed. Mineko Iwasaki, the most famous of the Geisha of Gion, who was the basis for the popular story of "Memoirs of a Geisha". Nguyen Thi Hoa, a woman impregnated and abandoned by an American soldier during the Vietnam war. Several Thai and Philippine "bar girls", who see Western men as little more than a good time and walking wallets. These interviews challenge our world view and opinions more than any analysis of "Miss Saigon", because they are real and alive rather than just Hollywood fairy tales.

Unfortunately, Sheridan Prasso was not able to confront the uncomfortable truths that she herself brought to light. She huzzahs the sexual liberation of Asian culture, where women were historically allowed to have multiple partners of their choosing, where coming to your wedding as a virgin was considered an embarrassment, where women were ignorant of the concept of sex as something dirty and shameful. Yet with the same hand, she condemns the White men who indulge in this freedom, who freely offer money for services, as freely as the women offer services for money. The Japanese woman who falls in love with her husband for his Americanism is a hero, free from her social training. The American man who falls in love with his wife for her Japaneseness is a villain, a slave to his social training. A man who brings his wife flowers is generous and kind. A woman who washes her husbands back is docile and dominated. There is no room for understanding, for true appreciation, acceptance and love.

Through her analysis, through her interviews, the answer seems so completely clear. There is a relationship between Asia and the West and sex, and this relationship is reciprocal, and one needs only to connect the dots. This is not, however, a necessarily bad thing. But this truth is, I think, a little bit too uncomfortable for Prasso to go there.

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You know you've touched a nerve when people get THIS defensive.

No one likes to be called out on his or her game. And this book calls all parties out on their prospective games.

Much as countless women (from a particular economic group) found a term to identify their discontent after reading Betty Friedan's 1963 book Feminine Mystique, Asian Americans will undoubtedly find in Prasso's book The Asian Mystique, a cohesive explanation of the strange behavior and perception towards Asians from the West.

Prasso does an excellent job documenting the visual etymology of the Asian Mystique in the popular imagination of the West, starting from Aphrodite, through centuries when China and Japan closed its doors to foreigners- forcing outsiders to "roll their own" and create a persona out of hearsay and thrice-removed tales - till present times, where Hollywood entertainment, mainstream media, and the Internet (including Amazon reviews) controls visual perception as fact.

Prasso points out that in the last hundred years , Asian actresses had only two roles available to them (dragon lady, or vixen prostitute (see Live Free or Die Hard for proof), but that's still one more option than what is available to the Asian actor. A chapter on the systematic emasculation of Asian men in the mainstream West deserves praise as this is something that has been discussed for many years in the Asian-American online community; actors like Jet Li, Jackie Chan, and Chow Yun Fat are allowed entry onto American screens and near Caucasian actresses, but are never allowed to kiss or touch any of them.

One of the most valuable items Prasso points to is the discrepancy between general Asian etiquette (that of "giving way to get your way") versus Western values (aggressive affirmation of the self as a declaration of individual need). This method of the East is often mistakenly perceived as a sign of weakness, giving rise to the sense of superiority among Westerners. (It doesn't help the Asian mystique that our culture often communicates through making a statement obliquely.) Prasso believes that the resulting false sense of complacency among Westerners will lead to dire consequences.

Throughout the book, white males with Yellow Fever (every single Asian American I have met in the US in the past thirty years have come across these men) and men who exotify and visit the lesser (economically) developed Asian countries for sex, are accurately portrayed as sad, overweight, balding, unattractive men who are well past their prime. These men, who are fed up with the strong, opinionated, materialistic women of the West find acceptance and adoration in young, attractive Asian girls who "see" them as being in a league with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt purely because of their skin color. Personally, I feel this is an important aspect of the book; there are as many exotifications of the West (in the Asian perception) as there are in the inverted scheme. What is less obvious is the subtext of what constitutes "The Western Woman" today, and why they are making "The Western Man" (who wants to return to the "good ol days" - which in itself is an exotification- when he had more power) run in the direction of the economically depressed East. If these males, stricken with Yellow Fever, were to visit cosmopolitan Asian countries, Asian women who are financially well-off, and are tenfold more materialistic than Western women, would not even grace them with a glance. Prasso does state in the opening of the book that "it is as much about us as it is about Asia."

Along the way, the book explores historical milestones that mark Asian identity in the Western consciousness; the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act; the Japanese Internment camps in the US during WWII; and the evolution of Madame Butterfly from the original Madam Chrysantheme. An interview with Mineko Iwasaki reveals as much as the real Sayuri's bio, whom Memoirs of a Geisha was partially based on. A look into war bride Nguyen Thi Hoa's bio, the notorious concept of the "Cathay Ten," Thai working girls, Okinawa Koku-jo (Okinawa girls who exotify and fetishize black men), Bangkok, and Indonesia visits follow. A strong chapter on female politicians from Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and the Philippines puts a reader in awe at life stories of individuals who have overcome odds and male oppression to attain success and visibility.

The book concludes with a somewhat misleading chapter. While I fully agree with the author in the observation that many Asians are guilty of reinforcing, utilizing, and cashing in on their mystique to get ahead, I felt mystified at the closing sentences. First, there is the sentence "some of the most successful, upstanding businesswomen of Asia know the game (utilizing mystique to their advantage) too....;You've got to use what you've got, right?' she said. Her sentiments are far from unusual." This implication indirectly diminishes the conscientious work and success stories presented in the previous chapter. Second of all, pointing out the vested interest in portraying prostitutes and sex workers as victims for the sake of funding seemed petty. Organizations created to help sex workers, regardless of what country they focus their assistance on, depends on the message of victimization for donation and sustenance. To say that organizations issue reports of victim-hood in the interest of making money is not merely defining the nature of the institution, it is negating the importance of abolishing violence and helping to regulate aid to the unfortunate sex workers in every country.

But I'll let these go. Because if I didn't, it would be like asking people to throw out a book just because a single Shogun reference was not accurate.

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Review from "The Japan Times"

Apparently, there are still Western men who believe that the East is an obliging seductress, mass producing an endless line of voluptuous women, whose laconic sexual pliancy is only exceeded by their desire to serve. This, according to Sheridan Prasso's new book, is a delusion that many Asian women are happy to cater to.

Prasso's observations are unsparing, but for anyone who has witnessed the transactions that take place between Western men and Eastern women in cities like Bangkok, even the holy city of Lhasa, will know they are wickedly accurate. On the topic of the hordes of middle-aged Western men who haunt the bars, brothels and matchmaking agencies of Asia, she concludes, " . . . any man can experience feeling attractive again - even loved. Old, fat, or ugly by Western standards, it doesn't matter. Anyone can be the Alpha Male and Lord Jim."

In the distorting mirror of Asian mystique, reserve can be interpreted as weakness, Asian women quickly characterized as submissive, obedient, obliging; Asian men emasculated. Such largely Western fantasies of the Orient are "antiquated, perhaps, but still shockingly influential."

Although Passo reserves a special vitriol for the male sexual adventurer, she deals a fair hand two ways, including both sexes in the collusive act of mystifying and marketing the East. In the chapter 'Screwing, Getting Screwed, And Getting Ahead,' Prasso portrays the alternatively nave and opportunistic behavior of Filipina prostitutes. In Angeles City, a run down flesh market, where solitary men, often victims themselves of failed relationships and expectations, wander the dusty, purgatorial streets "in search of tender rejuvenating skin, hoping that human contact may somehow restore their sensation, vitality, and youth." In this city of relentless transaction, there are women who are "aware of these Western perceptions of Asian Mystique and know how to play them to advantage."

Prasso cites Hollywood and popular musicals as key factors in the dissemination of misleading images of the East, from the early screen performances of the highly successful Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong, the screen adaptation of the novel 'The World of Suzie Wong ,' to the fabulously popular 'Miss Saigon' which, complete with the sacrificial suicide of an Oriental women, is nothing less than a modern day reworking of Madame Butterfly. TV series like M.A.S.H. get a predictable drubbing, along with the limpid images of women in more recent cinematic portrayals like 'The Last Samurai.'

Hollywood and literature have manufactured two enduring, but opposing images of Asian women: the enigmatic but obliging geisha verses the treacherous, but no less sexually alluring Dragon Lady or Martial Arts Mistress. This is done in the most complimentary fashion, a 1943 front cover of 'Time' magazine portraying Madame Chiang Kai-shek as the 'Dragon Lady,' a tribute to her power and charisma. Lucy Liu, known for her various roles as seductress, martial arts specialist, and dominatrix, is the contemporary, beefed up and decidedly more lethal, version of Anna May Wong. Clearly the roles provide a very good living, and neither Wong before her nor Liu now, one notes, refused to play the game of image compliance.

Inevitably, there is a degree of reviewing as Prasso revisits this well-trodden topic. We have the usual references to Pierre Loti, Kipling, to works like 'Shogun,' but Prasso also includes commentary on erotic Asian literature, from the Taoist 'The Art of the Bedchamber,' to 'The Golden Lotus,' allegedly Mao Zedong's favorite leisure reading, works in which the Chinese linked the pleasures of the flesh with physical and spiritual nourishment and longevity, an irresistible combination.

Prasso largely avoids the risk of being seduced by the subject and losing perspective, although the book cover, the upper half offering the cherry lips and white makeup of a geisha, sends an ambiguous message, as does the inside image of the author in full geisha attire , replete with wig and a cosmetic facial. Is this meant to be flirtatious, tongue-in-cheek, or is it just the publishers' idea of selling copies?

Addicted as we are to the narcotic pleasures of the East, to the willing complicity of having our senses pleasantly addled, Prasso's book serves as a kind of detox clinic. Once the mystery, the allure of the Orient has been removed, however, what are we left with? The answer perhaps, is a more mature view of the East, one consonant with our sadly more homogenized world, where many the tints have been leached out. It will require a new maturity to accomplish it, the connoisseur of the finer things of the East in us replacing the voluptuary, the thinker displacing the lotus-eater, but perhaps it is the learning of Asia, its palpable trove of experience and wisdom, that we should venerate above the promise of the exotic and sensual.

In divesting us of our illusions, the author has left us without yearning but with a new perception of the East. A very fair exchange I would say.

STEPHEN MANSFIELD
The Japan Times
Sept. 25, 2005

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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