Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival - Hardcover

Pilling, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1594205841 ISBN 13: 9781594205842

Publisher: Penguin Pr, 2014

Synopsis

[A]n excellent book...” --The Economist

Financial Times Asia editor David Pilling presents a fresh vision of Japan, drawing on his own deep experience, as well as observations from a cross section of Japanese citizenry, including novelist Haruki Murakami, former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, industrialists and bankers, activists and artists, teenagers and octogenarians. Through their voices, Pilling'sBending Adversity captures the dynamism and diversity of contemporary Japan.

Pilling’s exploration begins with the 2011 triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. His deep reporting reveals both Japan’s vulnerabilities and its resilience and pushes him to understand the country’s past through cycles of crisis and reconstruction. Japan’s survivalist mentality has carried it through tremendous hardship, but is also the source of great destruction: It was the nineteenth-century struggle to ward off colonial intent that resulted in Japan’s own imperial endeavor, culminating in the devastation of World War II. Even the postwar economic miraclethe manufacturing and commerce explosion that brought unprecedented economic growth and earned Japan international clout might have been a less pure victory than it seemed. InBending Adversity Pilling questions what was lost in the country’s blind, aborted climb to #1. With the same rigor, he revisits 1990the year the economic bubble burst, and the beginning of Japan’s lost decades”to ask if the turning point might be viewed differently. While financial struggle and national debt are a reality, post-growth Japan has also successfully maintained a stable standard of living and social cohesion. And while life has become less certain, opportunitiesin particular for the young and for womenhave diversified.
Still, Japan is in many ways a country in recovery, working to find a way forward after the events of 2011 and decades of slow growth.Bending Adversity closes with a reflection on what the 2012 reelection of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and his radical antideflation policy, might mean for Japan and its future. Informed throughout by the insights shared by Pilling’s many interview subjects,Bending Adversity rigorously engages with the social, spiritual, financial, and political life of Japan to create a more nuanced representation of the oft-misunderstood island nation and its people.

James Fallows, The New York Times Book Review
The ground-zero disaster reporting will command the attention of any reader. Pilling vividly recreates the waves of different sorts of destruction... For me,these scenes powerfully recall John Hersey’s Hiroshima--and although the causes were obviously different, in each case the longest-lasting source of damage came from radiation... Pilling is eloquent and direct.”

The Financial Times
David Pilling quotes a visiting MP from northern England, dazzled by Tokyo’s lights and awed by its bustling prosperity: If this is a recession, I want one.’ Not the least of the merits ofPilling’s hugely enjoyable and perceptive book on Japan is that he places the denunciations of two allegedly lost decades” in the context of what the country is really like and its actual achievements.”

The Telegraph (UK)
Pilling, the Asia editor of the Financial Times, is perfectly placed to be our guide, andhis insights are a real rarity when very few Western journalists communicate the essence of the world’s third-largest economy in anything but the most superficial ways. Here, there isa terrific selection of interview subjects mixed with great reportage and fact selection...he does get people to say wonderful thi

About this title

Review:

Bending Adversity is a superb reappraisal of the so-called 'lost decade(s)' of contemporary Japan. David Pilling combines a historian's breadth of vision, an anthropologist's clearheadedness, an investigator's knack of knowing what questions to ask, an economist's grasp of the circuitry of money and a top-notch journalist's curiosity about the human effects of political causes. The result
is a probing, nourishing and independent-minded book for any reader seeking to understand modern Japan and its unsure place in the world

(David Mitchell)

Fascinating and well-researched ... Pilling's experience as a journalist lends Bending Adversity a welcome veracity it might otherwise have lacked ... the six sections are written lucidly and contain a wealth of useful information ... Pilling went to the area where the tsunami struck on several occasions and his reportage from those experiences is the best writing here - poignant, insightful, understated, heart breaking but also often uplifting ... This book does an excellent job of demonstrating just how resilient the Japanese people have been in the face of recent environmental, social, and economic disaster (Independent)

Bending Adversity does an excellent job of reappraising [Japan's] lost years of economic deflation and social and political stagnation ... There has to be a way, says Pilling, that we can live without growth. This fascinating and timely book shows us where to look for it (Spectator)

Pilling, like many writers who come to love Japan and enjoy its many eccentricities, wants to rescue it from the standard one-dimensional images of the country as some sort of model or cautionary tale ... we need to read this book and find that Japan is a much more interesting and engaging place, for all its flaws and frustrations, than the drama theorists would have us believe (Bill Emmott Literary Review)

A superb book on contemporary Japan that, better than any other I have read, manages to get the reader inside the skin of Japanese society ... astutely observed ... a great read brimming with insights and ... crafting a colourful and rounded analysis, one that doesn't shy from criticism, but also veers away from shrill harangue. It is evident that Pilling is keen on Japan, but it is not a naive embrace. I admire his knack for finding the fault-line in most any debate about Japan and fairly summarizing both sides... delivering a balanced assessment that sidesteps what he terms the 'sneering bitterness' that animates much analysis of contemporary Japan. Along the way, readers encounter a diversity of perspectives that subvert tropes of uniformity and conformity (Japan Times)

Pilling draws on his own experiences, as well as interviews with novelists, academics, politicians, former prime ministers, executives, bankers, activists, and citizens young and old to provide a probing and insightful portrait of contemporary Japan (Publishers Weekly)

Breaking Adversity is a fascinating read for anyone with an interest in economics and politics eager to know more about how a significant world power got to the top tables of international diplomacy. However, it has more to offer than just this. Pilling is every bit as interesting when he tells the stories of the everyday Japanese behind the headlines, and how their self-image as a nation has been forced to change several times during the course of the country's transition into the modern world (Sunday Business Post)

Eloquent and ambitious ... as a financial journalist, [Pilling makes] coherent and interesting arguments about the real nature of Japanese economic decline and explaining that its huge government debt is not necessarily a portent of doom ... powerful (Sunday Times)

David Pilling is an Anglo expert on Japan ... authoritative and entertaining ... [Pilling] deftly manages the trick of illustrating grand sweep with small anecdote (Observer)

Not the least of the merits of Pilling's hugely enjoyable and perceptive book on Japan is that he places the denunciations of two allegedly 'lost decades' in the context of what the country is really like and its actual achievements (Financial Times)

About the Author:

David Pilling is the Asia editor of the Financial Times. He was previously the Tokyo bureau chief for the FT from January 2002 to August 2008. Pilling’s reporting from Japan and his weekly column on Asia have won several prizes, including from the Society of Publishers in Asia Awards and the UK’s Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards. He lives in Hong Kong.

David Pilling is the Asia editor of the Financial Times. He was previously the Tokyo bureau chief for theFT from January 2002 to August 2008. Pilling’s reporting from Japan and his weekly column on Asia have won several prizes, including from the Society of Publishers in Asia Awards and the UK’s Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards. He lives in Hong Kong.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Pr
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1594205841
• ISBN 13: 9781594205842
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 382