A Spring Like Any Other

It's easy to understand the success of this book in its native Japan--if Steve Ross or another extravagantly asseted American businessman were to write a roman a clef, U.S. readers, too, would be mighty interested. But Tsujii, pseudonym for Seiji Tsutsumi, the founder of the giant Saison conglomerate, is less obvious a draw on these shores. His narrator, at the helm of a thriving multinational corporation, ponders the contrast of his apparent achievements to his private doubts and anxieties--the structure is poetic, with the narrative stretching out to capture different times and places, but the actual prose flags (``Even when I behave as others do, I'm not able to give what is really being asked of me. This makes me feel empty, and my behavior toward others lacks confidence''). Quiet unveilings of family scandals--a father's philandering; a sister's abandonment of her children; a nephew's mental illness--lose punch in an English-language context. (Apr.)