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Title: Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Modern Japan by Alex Kerr ISBN: 0-8090-3943-5 Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub Pub. Date: 10 February, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.9 (70 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent book. Japanese version is out.
Comment: For those wondering when the Japanese version is coming out. Found today online in Japan Times.
OUR PLANET EARTH
ALEX KERR'S VIEW
Japan: A land gone to the dogs?
By STEPHEN HESSE
Alex Kerr loves Japan as much as anyone, but he knows much more about it than most. With the publication April 25 of "Inu to Oni" (Kodansha) -- a translation of his book "Dogs and Demons" (Hill and Wang, 2001) -- Japanese, too, will be able to share his insight. As it says on the cover of "Dogs and Demons," the book offers "tales from the dark side of Japan's well-known modern accomplishments.
This book is excellent because it brings to the front burner a lot of things that are kept in the closet concerning Japan. As a tourist you probably cannot see it. However if you have lived there you know what he is talking about. The question can be applied in many countries. How do you change systems that were set up years ago and have outlived the purpose it was originally designed for ? How do you tell the people have have vested interests in the status quo that the game is over ? A good read.
Rating: 4
Summary: Cry the Beloved Country
Comment: As he did in Lost Japan, his study of traditional arts and crafts, Alex Kerr gives us deep insights into his adopted country. But this isn't a celebration of Japan and its traditions. Instead it's a lament for a country that's lost its way.
The root cause, according to Kerr, is a self-serving bureacracy that sits above the governance of politicians and the people. Combine this with a rigid education system, a conception of modernism frozen in post WW II priorties, and a population conditioned to acceptance and obediance, and the result is a mediocre society mired in its self-created fictions. Balance, creativity and a sense of proportion have lost out to manga, Hello Kitty, and out-of-control construction projects.
This book is an antidote to all the uncritical and idealized versions of Japan that came our way in the eighties. It's an eloquent diatribe by a loving and angry uncle. Some nuance is lost in Kerr's forceful prose, but his arguments are always insightful and thought provoking.
Whether you love, fear, or dislike Japan, this book is must reading.
Rating: 4
Summary: A fascinating and infuriating look at modern Japan
Comment: In Dogs and Demons, Alex Kerr describes a Japan that few people outside the country ever encounter. He notes the river and streambeds paved with concrete, the forests filled with monoculture cedar trees, and a Ministry of Environment so weak that it can only "rubber-stamp" more construction projects. He details how the Ministry of Finance and the Construction Ministry have become "addicted" to "make-work" construction projects that prop-up one fifth of the Japanese workforce but ravage the environment and place both local government as well as the entire nation in perilous debt. He reports the ways in which bureaucrats have created "cozy" relationships in which they retire from public service and through "amakudari" or "descent from heaven" take jobs in the industries they used to monitor and award contracts to. Kerr finds the bureaucracy guilty of "institutionalized corruption," and fills the pages of his book with statistics and anecdotes pointing to horrendous mismanagement of public funds and self-serving greed. He states that Japan's institutional policies largely froze in the 1960s when the Japanese bureaucracy perfected techniques of "Japanese-capitalism" and assumed tremendous power in steering the nation to riches. When the "bubble" burst in the early 90s, Kerr finds that the bureaucracy did not evolve. While America, Europe, and ascendant East Asian "tigers" invested more heavily in information services and tourism, Japan sought to preserve the status quo and enrich itself by creating a "construction state." Kerr concludes that Japan is a developed nation with a developing country's mentality and as a result finds itself in the quagmire its in today.
Kerr points out that the proof of Japan's error is everywhere. He notes that Japan has largely fallen off the international tourism circuit, that its scarred "construction state" landscape is not what tourists want to see. He fortifies this point by observing that while travel to Japan has shrunk, travel of Japanese to foreign countries has skyrocketed. He states that the museum most visited by Japanese people is not in Japan: the Louvre in France. Not only is Japan failing to attract the tourists, he states, it is now also failing to attract leading business investors. Kerr points out that other financial centers in Asia such as Singapore and Hong Kong have surpassed Japan in their appeal to investment bankers as these cities are more welcoming to entrepreneurial business and have more advanced information technology sectors. Kerr points out that most of Japan's banks would be considered bankrupt by international standards. Japan, with its reputation for being at the forefront of modern economics and technology, has fallen behind.
From the above description, one might assume that Kerr has an agenda of "Japan bashing." This is not the case. Kerr's book, though it is a passionate attack on Japan's bureaucracy, is a lamentation. Kerr laments Japan's destruction of its own land and traditional places. He laments that the general populace in Japan has been educated to be obedient and docile and has not been able to reclaim power from a bureaucracy that he describes as a "battleship" heading straight for the "rocks." He criticizes the education system for its emphasis on conformity and wrote learning as well as encouraging students to spend every waking hour in cram schools or clubs that further enforce these patterns. He states that this system leaves students exhausted and with little time to be creative or form their own opinions. In this way when these students become adults they do not have the faculties to question a system that hugely favors industry over their own interests. He points out that in Japan, citizens make almost no interest on the massive savings needed to purchase a residence, spend little time at university engaged in rigorous study, and live cramped quarters that cost more than spacious accommodations of countries with higher population densities. Whereas people in other rich countries are able to make money with their money through retirement funds, Japanese people are increasingly burdened by "loan-shark" consumer debt companies. Kerr finds that the sacrifices of the Japanese people are great, and that those that benefit from the system are doing little productive good.
Kerr is an author of books in both English and Japanese, and is a longtime resident of Japan. He is often hired as a consultant and speaker in Japan. He is without a doubt one of the most respected foreign intellectuals in Japan. In Dogs and Demons he writes of his inner struggle in writing the book. His Japanese friends and colleagues urged him to persevere. He states: "I do not believe foreigners should make demands on Japan." Thus his book is a collection of observations that many people in Japan are not in a position to make. Kerr has dared to break the silence that a destructive system perpetuates. His book is powerful and essential reading for anyone interested the difficulties confronting modern Japan.
But, as this book is bitter in tone, be sure to balance this book's message with the galaxy of other books that look fondly on Japan.
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Title: Lost Japan by Alex Kerr ISBN: 0864423705 Publisher: Lonely Planet Pub. Date: May, 1996 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: The Enigma of Japanese Power : People and Politics in a Stateless Nation by Karel Van Wolferen ISBN: 0679728023 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 10 June, 1990 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Speed Tribes : Days and Night's with Japan's Next Generation by Karl T. Greenfeld ISBN: 0060926651 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 13 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Tokyo Underworld : The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan by Robert Whiting ISBN: 0375724893 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 26 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Roads to Sata: A 2000-Mile Walk Through Japan by Alan Booth ISBN: 1568361874 Publisher: Kodansha International Pub. Date: June, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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