Letter: Famous Japanese? Here's 10 names

Sir: Ten famous Japanese? Between reading Bryan Appleyard's article ('A Smell-free never-never land', 13 April) and arriving at work to write this letter 10 minutes later, I came up with: Akio Morita, chairman of Sony; Hokusai, 19th century woodblock artist; Toshiro Mifune, actor; Akira Kurosawa, film director; Kenzo Tange, architect; Kazuo Ishiguro, author; Katsuhiro Otomo, comic book writer and animator and creator of the acclaimed work Akira seen recently on BBC television; Yukio Mishima, writer; Ken Takakura, actor, and Yohji Yamamoto, fashion designer.

Japan may be a complex phenomenon, but its people are not quite as unknown as Mr Appleyard thinks . . .

Yours faithfully,

C. M. ROGERS

Edgware,

Middlesex

13 April