The Outnation : A Search for the Soul of Japan Book

In this rigorous and searching,but also deeply personal,journey through Japan's islands and institutions,Rauch burrows deep under the surface to learn how different,and how dangerous,Japan really is. He finds that today's Japan,for all its surface alienness,is strikingly and often surprisingly familiar. Economicaly,it's similar to America in the days of the great cartels and company towns,with a high-tech update. Politically,it's Mayor Daley's Chicago raised to a national scale. And its values,far from being alien to the West,are Plato's own.

Anyone interested in business in Japan--whether to compete, cooperate, emulate, or simply understand--will profit from this insightful and illuminating look at Japan and the Japanese. Photographs by Joel Sackett and a foreward by James Fallows provide a rich context to Rauch's observations.