cover image Sun Also Sets

Sun Also Sets

Bill Emmott. Crown Publishers, $19.95 (292pp) ISBN 978-0-8129-1816-8

Emmot, former Tokyo correspondent for the why do we ital the here but not, say, The New Yorker?gs/good point. Economist , here offers one of the most sensible books on the Japanese economy to appear in memory. He shows that Japan's economic power derives from an enormous capital surplus amassed through a high savings rate (16% compared to U.S. 3%-5%) and an excess of exports over imports. The surplus has financed Japanese industrial expansion abroad but has driven the Tokyo real estate and stock markets sky high, perhaps dangerously so. These surpluses have peaked and will disappear over the next decade, argues Emmot, because ``Japan is becoming a nation of consumers, of pleasure-seekers, of importers, of investors, and of speculators.'' In the meantime, the fall of the dollar is helping to bring America's trade deficit down. The book provides an antidote to the Japan-bashers. Author tour. (Nov.)