Japan Swings

An indispensable guide to understanding the news coming out of Japan as its astonishing comeback changes course.

Murray Sayle, of the New Yorker

In the 1990s Japan swung swiftly and suddenly from being an unstoppable economic colossus to a creaky house of cards on the brink of collapse. Once cautious banks and bureaucrats fell in with cowboy businessmen and gangsters. The political system crumpled along with many of the real-life myths and cultural certitudes built up around Japan and its economic miracle over the past half century. The Japanese themselves have been rattled by a series of natural disasters and terrorist attacks that spread a deep pessimism through society.

Richard McGregor lived in Japan through this dramatic period, and tells the tale not through faceless corporations, but with stories of elite mandarins, scheming politicians, ultra-nationalist thugs, and the new generation of young men and women who are transforming the nation's workplaces and bedrooms.

McGregor vividly describes Japan's new dynamic of reforming its bureaucracies, cleaning up its political system, and putting the issues of the Second World War behind it. Above all, his examination of Japan's struggle to find its own identity as a nation in a difficult position between the West and Asia is extremely enlightening.

Yoichi Funabashi, Bureau Chief, Asahi Shimbun, American General Bureau