| NOTA |
(★)(Not since World War II has Japan faced a crisis like the one before it now. An apparently endless recession has weakened the foundations of the traditional family and severed the bond between Japan´s corporations and employees. Unruly children turn classrooms into battlefields. Ultranationalist pride and xenophobia are celebrated in best-selling comic books and championed by media superstars, including the governor of Tokyo. Upheavals across the society have significant ramifications for America. As the Japanese reject their traditions wholesale, they view their half-century-old connection to the United States with mounting skepticism. Drawing on his fluent Japanese and unmatched intimacy with the culture, John Nathan reveals a nation newly unmoored from the traditions that have shored it up and sometimes stifled it. Dramatic changes in business are augured by Carlos Ghosn, the Brazilian president of Nissan, once scorned as an outsider, now hailed for reviving a moribund giant. The soft-spoken artist Yoshinori Kobayashi foments and reflects rabid nationalism among millions with his hugely popular comic books. Yasuo Tanaka, a puckish writer and bon vivant, wins the governorship of Nagano and revolutionizes Japanese politics with his radical populism. Nathan delves beyond Japan´s celebrities to map the epic shifts in daily life. He unveils the horrors of the Japanese school system. He goes inside a ´career transition service´ to witness the novel, nuanced rituals of job-hunting Japanese-style. He takes the pulse of ordinary citizens who are caught up in the country´s many profound social shifts : agitprop pop culture, emerging feminism, environmentalism, teenage consumerism, entrepreneurship, and more. With immediacy and elan, John Nathan dispels conventional wisdom about Japan and replaces it with a brilliant vision of a country roiling with pride, uncertainty, creativity, fear, and hope. ◆John Nathan, the Takashima Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, has translated the novels of Yukio Mishima and Kenzaburo Oe into English, and is the author of a definitive biography of Mishima. His previous book,´Sony : The Private Life´, received wide acclaim, including a spot on Business Week´s list of the best books of 1999. Nathan contributes to The New Yorker and other publications.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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