"Fascinating...clearly stated, interesting and provoking.... A plainspoken account of living in Asia." San Francisco Chronicle
Anyone who has heard his weekly commentary on NPR knows that T. R. Reid is trenchant, funny, and deeply knowledgeable reporter and now he brings this erudition and humor to the five years he spent in Japanwhere he served as The Washington Post's Tokyo bureau chief. He provides unique insights into the country and its 2,500-year-old Confucian tradition, a powerful ethical system that has played an integral role in the continent's "postwar miracle."
Whether describing his neighbor calmly asserting that his son's loud bass playing brings disrepute on the neighborhood, or the Japanese custom of having students clean the schools, Reid inspires us to consider the many benefits of the Asian Wayas well as its drawbacksand to use this to come to a greater understanding of both Japanese culture and America.
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From the Publisher
"A provocative and entertaining portrayal...unfolds with insight, wry amusement, and unforgettable portraits that do indeed teach us as much about ourselves as about those living in 'the East.'" The Washington Post Book World"Engaging...a fascinating read...he is amusing, droll and extremely knowledgeable." Detroit Free Press
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
In this breezy homily, Reid, an NPR commentator who was the Washington Post's Tokyo bureau chief for five years, offers a look at what he calls Asia's "social miracle" (as opposed to its once vaunted economic growth). The nations of East Asia, he reports, have "the safest streets, the strongest families, and the best schools in the world." Along with their enviably low rates of crime, divorce, unwed motherhood and vandalism, countries like Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand boast a burgeoning middle class, a general aura of civility and a more egalitarian distribution of wealth than the U.S. enjoys. Like many other Asia watchers, Reid attributes this social cohesiveness to a shared set of core values--discipline, loyalty, hard work, a focus on education, group harmony, etc.--that he traces back to the Confucian classics. Yet Reid, now the Post's London bureau chief, readily admits that the East Asian model of Confucian prosperity has glaring flaws: most cities he visited were drab and ugly; Singapore is a "self-righteous and thoroughly intolerant place controlled by a small clique." Reid, who transplanted his family of five from a small Colorado town to Tokyo, serves up amusing anecdotes and cross-cultural observations (his two daughters enrolled in a Japanese public school), but his report reads like one long radio spiel and covers well-trod terrain. After gently berating Westerners for more than 200 pages, he gets to eat his rice cake and have it, too: Confucian values and our own Judeo-Christian morality, he concludes, are basically the same, differing mainly in nuance. Author tour. (Mar.)
Library Journal
Using anecdotes of his family's five-year sojourn in Tokyo and his own observations of Asian customs, media, and corporate practices, Washington Post bureau chief Reid offers a welcome expos of modern East Asia on the eve of what he terms "the Asian century." He contrasts Asia's ways with the West's in an effort to explain why the United States in particular does not measure up to the East on social stability indicators such as violent crime, theft, and single parenthood. Reid gives modern Asian trends a historical basis, with particularly keen insights into European imperialism's legacy there. Confucius's life and subsequent influence in both the East and West are illuminated. An appendix of concise, almanac-like entries for each East Asian nation includes brief historical backgrounds, economy, size, current political trends, and sociopolitical projections for the future. Highly recommended for all collections.--Kim Baxter, Van Houter Lib., New Jersey Inst. of Technology, Newark
Frank Gibney
Admittedly, the Master's ritual and his sense of group responsibility tided the Japanese over the difficult postwar half-century, just as they did for centuries past during the troubled times of the old Tokugawa shogunate. But in a world that for better or worse has become globalized, marked by computer-assisted innovation, unsparing competition and virtually automated international money markets, it's about time to send the old boy packing.
The New York Times Book Review
Kirkus Reviews
A readable if superficial analysis of the moral basis of east Asian society. Over the course of a generation, the nations of east Asia have become, to varying degrees, prosperous industrial societies. And a social miracle has accompanied the economic miracle, notes Reid (former Tokyo bureau chief for the Washington Post), namely, social stability. Nations such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan all enjoy extremely low crime rates. Divorce is rare. Public education is superb; economic equality is more a fact than a goal. These societies work, and in comparison, ours doesn't. Why? Reid holds east Asian values responsible. For the region's people generally adhere to the tenets of Confucianism, and Confucianism preaches social harmony as an end in itself. Thus, to break or disregard social mores brings shame upon the self, one's family, and one's society. Reid writes knowingly about Confucian thought and shows, through sharply drawn anecdotes, how harmony is pursued and practiced on a daily basis in east Asia. Yet he doesn't find Confucian moral values to differ all that much from those of the West and its Judeo-Christian tradition. The main difference, for Reid, lies in the fact that east Asian societies will go to extraordinary lengths to instill moral values in every member (and this, he claims, Americans don't do, although they should). There are flaws in his logic, however. The author never questions, for instance, the psychic cost of socially mandated conformity, nor does he discuss the often highly unequal status of women in east Asia. And he doesn't consider how differing social policies, rather than simply differing emphases on values, may account for east Asia's success. Reidpresents an interesting thesis but doesn't quite convince. (Author tour) .
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