What Is Japan?: Contradictions and Transformations - Hardcover

Sakaiya, Taichi

3.3

23 ratings by Goodreads

9781568360010: What Is Japan?: Contradictions and Transformations

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1568360010 ISBN 13: 9781568360010

Publisher: Kodansha USA Inc, 1993

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Looks at Japanese character, history, and culture, assesses social and economic conditions in Japan, and describes the biggest problems facing Japan in the future

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A coherent, perceptive appraisal of Japan, from a former official of its vaunted Ministry of International Trade and Industry. Ranging back and forth through his homeland's history, Sakaiya (The Knowledge-Value Revolution, 1991) offers an utterly fascinating account of how an internally cohesive island nation without natural resources became a global economic power despite a shattering defeat in WW II. He traces key character traits of the remarkably homogeneous, consensus-oriented population back to the Tokugawa Shogunate, the Meijii Restoration, and other premodern eras, but he contends that the military regime in control before Pearl Harbor was primarily responsible for harnessing the traditions and spirit of Japan to build an industrial juggernaut. The means to this end, the author argues, was administrative guidance provided by a bureaucratic system whose stress on standardization has made the country immensely productive, albeit less than creative. Commercial success has left the diligent, provident Japanese vaguely discontented, concludes Sakaiya, who goes on to detail the many ways in which the government is geared to accommodate big business, frequently at the expense of domestic consumers. Nonetheless, he reports, quality-of-life issues have begun to interest a long-suffering electorate increasingly disturbed by public scandals, while demographic as well as international pressures may force convulsive revisions in the social contract. Worth noting in this context is the author's observation that ``when change occurs in Japan, it occurs completely, because Japanese fear being different from the group.'' Revelatory perspectives on a country that strikes many as a latter-day analogue of Churchill's 1939 take on Russia--``a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.'' -- Copyright �1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

In an extraordinarily stimulating and provocative book, Sakaiya ( The Knowledge-Value Revolution ), former doyen of the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry, observes that, to Americans, Japan seems "a faceless economic power, a black box that belches forth industrial products . . . there may be no other country whose brand names are so widely known and yet whose people and culture are so obscure." His explanations are those of a loyalist exalting his culture's virtues even as he takes it to task. Sakaiya shifts between Japan's current work-focused society--which has no room for individuality and a population, probably the world's richest, that does not enjoy its wealth--and its historic roots. His insider's insights into what he calls the government's "administrative guidance" give new dimension to the debate over this well-known but poorly understood policy designed to encourage mass production, create a uniformly trained populace to staff its corporations and make Tokyo the "only brain" of a centralized nation. Equally strong are his assessments of Japan's cultural differences from the rest of the world, American problems of access to Japanese markets, current Tokyo scandals, recession, housing, education, international pressures and probable new directions for the country.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.