Shadows of the Rising Sun: A Critical View of the "Japanese Miracle"

by Jared Taylor

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0688024556
• ISBN13: 9780688024550
• Release Date: November 1983
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.42 lbs.

Customer Reviews

One of the early "revisionists"

I read this book in the late 80s when I was majoring in Japan Studies in the university. At that time, the Edwin Reischaur crowd dominated everything about Japan. In Edwin's theory, it was wonderful, the Japanese loved Americans, practiced free trade and believed in pretty much the same things as Americans. It was just a wonderful, equal relationship. Jared's was one of the first books I read that dispelled that nonsense. Written by a man fluent in Japanese, who had gone to school in Japan and had no political points to make by sugarcoating everything. You'll learn just how "different" the Japanese veiw themselves from the rest of the world, you learn of Japanese discrimination and racism, and you'll learn how being a heirarchical society results in viewing others as inferiors or superiors and how this veiw affects Japan's view of itself vs the rest of Asia, and other countries. ( THis information was very valuable and extremly accurate when I went to Japan to live for several years in the early 90s.) You'll learn that the term "gaijin" does not simploy mean foreigner. You'll learn a lot of things about what the Japanese are like and what it is like to live here.The trade info is now out of date, but the ideas are still valid.

An accurate assessment of a fascinating country

Having lived in Japan for about one year on a cultural and language exchange last year, I found this book really interesting. It put a lot of the small cultural differences in perspective for me, and after a couple of pages of reading, I was quite engrossed and couldn't put it down until I had finished. Japan is so different to New Zealand, but often I think I took quite a lot of that for granted - when you've been living in a foreign country for a year, you become quite blase about it after a while. The book firmed up my cultural perception considerably, and although it is now quite dated, the bulk of what it has to say is still relevant in the late 1990s.I did think that the book had quite a strong focus on the economic side, delving into discussions on such topics as the Japanese corporation, which I don't have such a strong interest in, but I skipped over that part, and as a whole, found it an excellent book, which I would thoroughly recommend to anyone with an interest in things Japanese.