When Ian Buruma arrived in Tokyo as a young film student in 1975, he found a feverish & surreal metropolis in the midst of an economic boom, where everything seemed new & history only remained in fragments. Through his adventures in the world of avant-garde theatre, his encounters with carnival acts, fashion photographers & moments on-set with Akira Kurosawa, Buruma came of age. For an outsider, unattached to the cultural burdens placed on the Japanese, this was a place to be truly free. A Tokyo Romance is a portrait of a young artist & the fantastical city that shaped him, & a timeless story about the desire to transgress boundaries: cultural, artistic & sexual.