SOURCE: "From Tea to Transistors," in Saturday Review, Vol. 49, No. 45, November 5, 1966, pp. 44, 74.

In the following review, Bristol asserts that Buck's The People of Japan is more of a sentimental look at the country than an in-depth study.

Pearl Buck unreservedly adopted China for her spiritual home when her parents, missionaries with more than a decade of experience in that sprawling, disorganized country, brought her there to live as a child. Later, when she was old enough to visit Japan, she took China's cultural offspring to her heart.

In her latest book, [The People of Japan,] a collection of memories of prewar Japan, historical facts, and more modern observations—the last based largely on a three-month tour in 1960 of Korea and Japan—Mrs. Buck takes a grandmotherly look at a country that is admittedly only a step-child: loved, but at times very naughty. It was a country, however, that...