The purpose of this paper is to examine ethical implications of Pico Iyer’s representations of Japan. Iyer has been highly evaluated as a travel writer with a cosmopolitan sensitivity, who offers insightful observations on the increasingly globalising world. Nevertheless, his version of cosmopolitanism, particularly the alleged neglect of his own privileged position as a global traveller, has been also questioned by some scholars on travel writing. Bearing such a controversy in mind, my paper examines Iyer’s descriptions of Japan, particularly those in his recent travel book/ memoir Autumn Light: Japan’s Season of Fire and Farewells (2019). Iyer’s earlier travel books that established his reputation, Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East (1988) and The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home (2000), present Japan as a non-Western country that successfully negotiates globalisation while retaining its traditional culture. At the same time, he highlights his being based in Japan as credentials as a cosmopolitan traveller who feels at home anywhere without geo-cultural roots. Autumn Light, in contrast, thematises an aging Japanese society as well as his experience as a dweller rather than a traveller. Examining how the foregrounding of dwelling enables Iyer to characterise himself as a long-term observer of the aging society, my paper considers the extent to which Autumn Light complicates one of the central ethical issues in travel writing, namely the problem of representing the cultural Other.
