nouveau

inevitable law of human relationships: the moment everyone says you are unstoppable is right when you begin to decline. imagine: 1992; the soviet union has fallen. new york subways are filled with graffiti and drug addicts and flowing trash. Times Square is a war zone. L.A. is dirty and overrun by politicized Latinos. Japan, transcendent, technological, ultra-cool, has the tiniest personal electronics in the world, and everything is sleek, black, and cyberpunk. Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Isuzu, Sumitomo, Kawasaki. the Japanese juggernaut seems unstoppable.

fast-forward twenty years. Huaiwei, Tata Motors, Facebook, Google, Apple, Samsung, LG, Microsoft, Lakshmi Mittelcorps.

well how far we have come.

historians will of course declare after the fact that the seeds of Japan's decline were already apparent by 1992, with the birthrate already falling, and rumors of over-inflated real-estate troubling the stock market and loans made on the actual land. but in 1992, Japan seemed like the most dynamic, forceful, and futuristic country of the world, and Rising Sun captures this dynamic powerfully. unlike the somewhat later Tom Clancy Debt of Honor, Rising Sun may actually have been part of the surge against Japan, but in any case, this brutal rip-apart of Japan (enough to actually offend some Japanese) captures a moment that will probably never occur again. a blue-collar cop deals with ruthless and immoral Japanese, and the values of the basically decent impoverished American hero against the apparently sociopathic Tokyo crowd unreels against a smoggy and smudged out L.A.

good read, although history went exactly 180 degrees opposite what the book predicted.



1991 Japan: sleek, black, impressive. 2013 Japan: social isolates and religious cults.

we're living in an era of madness. this book has 400 written reviews so this is as random a place to put information as anywhere else. what Japan is hiding, so to speak, is just how verge-of-insanity everyone is write now. trust me. Ryu Murakami is actually accurate portraying the internal life of the Japanese.

we are living on the verge of anarchy! schoolgirls selling themselves! factories going bankrupt! the yen just slid back to 100 yen/dollar ! LDP's ascent and loose monetary policy is taking the bottom out of the currency markets. LDP/'Abenomics' based on currency depreciation and riding the tide of the asset-stripping tiger.

3% of japanese men are social isolates.

so Crichton, that tall-lanky, surgeon-writer, finally realized his theories were all bunk. the Japanese were not interested in tupping the best of the american girl's volleyball team. they simply wanted to...

die

o rising sun, o east asia coprosperity sphere. rain down on us ebooks at 2.99 or less. they shall be reviewed.