What is Japan?: Contradictions and Transformations

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. (July)