This book tells the tale of Japan's malaise since 1990. It combines a study of the financial world, the bureaucracy, and culture, to get at the roots of Japan's modern troubles.
The decades of Western adulation for the Japanese 'economic miracle' failed to notice a key point: that in the pursuit of this miracle the Japanese had turned their country into a degraded, concrete shambles - a wilderness of bad planning, corruption and crowding. Now that the miracle is at an end and Japan seems set to remain in the economic doldrums it must become apparent to everyone that on…