In 1955, Donald Richie, a gregarious 31-year-old who had been living in Japan for eight years, was asked to show Truman Capote around Tokyo. Capote was there to interview Marlon Brando, who was filming a movie near Kyoto. Like the characters in Sofia Coppola's film ''Lost in Translation,'' Capote had little interest in this exotic country and mostly hung around his hotel room, complaining of boredom. Richie, as he recalls in his journal, ran out of patience: "I don't see why you came here anyway," I finally said. He looked at me, wonderingly. "Why to do Brando, of course." "Not to see Japan?" "Why no," he said, as though mystified that anyone should think anything so unlikely."...