Dogs and Demons

For half a century, the Japanese economy was the envy of the world, their design ideas as pervasive as the Sony and Datsun assembly plants that sprang up to offer work to the unemployed of the Welsh valleys and deprived north-east of England. Their strategy of 'poor people, rich economy' and the cramped urban living that enabled them to maintain the natural beauty of their environment - one of the most varied and haunting in the world - gave many other developed nations pause for thought. Somewhere, however, in the 1990s, it all began to go wrong. Growth rates were overtaken by the Asian 'tiger' economies, and eventually ground to a halt. The Japan of misty mountains and pristine cherry-blossom groves was revealed to be nothing more than a myth, as decades of unchecked development and some of the world's most lenient pollution laws began to take their toll. A bureaucratic juggernaut, reinforced by the idea that concrete and man-made surfaces were neat and tidy, and somehow superior to natural materials, ensured that construction companies proceeded unchecked towards their seeming goal of cementing every inch of the Japanese coastline and countryside, damming every river in their path. Meanwhile, the unthinking obedience of the working population, taught from an early age how to integrate into the group and memorize facts by rote, or risk being ostracised, resulted in a singular lack of entrepreneurs willing to take risks. Western Japanologists, in love with the myth propagated by the Japanese themselves, blinded themselves to the obvious, and would brook no criticism of their adopted culture and of its leaders, somehow immune to any form of public accountability, with the result that the warnings came too late and Japan is now in a desperate state, its tourism industry as damaged as its manufacturing sector. Alex Kerr, a long-time resident, has refused to bury his head in the sand, and has written a hugely thought-provoking and interesting book about the ruin of a nation, and the price paid by its ordinary people. It is significant, however, that the complimentary puffs on the back of the book do not include a single comment by a Japanese reviewer.... (Kirkus UK)