The Chrysanthemum and the Rose (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781500758721)

I was born in a leafy London suburb in the spring of 1962. At the age of ten, my family moved to Bexhill on Sea, the first of two neighboring south coast seaside towns. When I was sixteen my family bought a house in Hastings. Radicalized by the Thatcher years and their devastating effect on my family I became deeply engrossed in political activism. By the spring of 1985, disillusion with politics and profound dissatisfaction with the direction of my life prompted me to leave Britain for Japan. I'd been corresponding with a pen-friend in Nara since I was sixteen and curiosity drew me to experience the place for myself. An intended stay of six months to a year dragged out into almost eighteen. Working as an English teacher I got completely locked into the whole expatriate lifestyle of excessive drinking and serial womanizing. I began cohabiting with my future wife and her two daughters in 1997. The womanizing part ended there and then although the drinking endured. Then and now, my hobbies were learning new things, savouring fine cigars, drinking with a small circle of friends and various writing projects. To date I have published five books, three under my own name. "The Chrysanthemum and the Rose" however, was the first one I began writing way back around 1999 or so. I lived continually in Japan for just short of eighteen years. Exhausted by what had become nothing less than a relentless workaholic lifestyle, I increasingly longed to return to my roots. Thus, with my wife and elder daughter I relocated to the UK early in 2003. I planned it poorly and struggled to reintegrate into English society after so long away. I had an on going battle with clinical depression for several years. Following two frustrating years, I quit the UK for the second time in January 2005 on being offered a job in Tokyo. Sadly, this turned out to be less than was anticipated. I have supported myself as a freelance teacher since then. We lived on the outskirts of Tokyo while my younger stepdaughter lived nearby. Our marriage lasted until 2013. In July 2012, I moved back to the UK for the second time, although this proved only to be a brief ten-month sabbatical in my bifurcated life rather than any genuine removal from one to the other. Finally accepting that I am as much an outsider in what had been my homeland as in my adopted country, in June 2013, I once again returned to Japan to resume my on going meeting of the twain.