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Book review: Bending Diversity

27 Mar 2014 by Tom Otley

Bending DiversityIt's an odd title for this book, suggesting a self-help element ("Learn lessons from the Japanese") which is wholly absent.

In fact, it refers to a Japanese proverb about transforming bad fortune into good, and whether Japan can once more achieve this feat after the triple catastrophe of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown.

Author David Pilling was Tokyo Bureau Chief for the Financial Times from 2002 until 2008 and then returned to cover the aftermath of the earthquake.

This book is the result of several years living and writing about the country, and is the perfect introduction for both the first-time visitor and also those who think they know the country well.

Informative, opinionated but also balanced, it explains Japan while at the same time making clear that any attempt to do so will immediately meet criticism from Westerners – and the Japanese themselves – who regard Japanese society as unique and unfathomable to outsiders.

Pilling doesn't buy into this, and is good at recounting his many conversations and interviews on the subject, whether war guilt, economic matters, the ageing population or the economic miracle and its aftermath, while at the same time taking us through recent history and the stories – and myths – that the Japanese tell themselves about their origins and history.

The book starts and finishes with the tsunami and its aftermath, but does not allow that terrible event to dominate. Instead, he gives a first-hand account of the country and allows the Japanese to speak for themselves, although admittedly far fewer "ordinary" Japanese feature outside the chapters on the tsunami. Instead, you get everyone from author Haruki Murakami to academics, sociologists, artists and politicians.

Throughout, the author's curiosity, even-handedness, and fascination with the country and its people are balanced by his awareness of his own shortcomings. If he has one larger mission, I sensed it was to undermine the notion that Japan has spent the last 20 years in a period of stagnation. As he puts it:

"'What has happened to Japan?' has become a common refrain. So low has its economic reputation sunk that Japan has even become a verb. Like Americanization, we now have 'Japanization', at least on the pages of the business press... It means to stagnate, to shrink, to stop competing, to lose one's entrepreneurial and industrial edge and to be crushed by a mountain of debt. It means to suffer permanent falling prices. It means a stock market that hasn't budged for years and property prices that make the US housing market look buoyant. It means a shrinking population, fading international visibility and domestic policy drift... Ultimately it carries with it... an intimation of death."

As Pilling makes clear, both with qualitative and quantitative data, this misses the truth of Japan, both for those living there as expats and for the Japanese themselves.

Reading the book between trips to Japan, I found myself looking forward to my return, and enjoying a newfound understanding and respect for much of what I encountered once I was back.

Tom Otley

Allen Lane, £20

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