Book Reviews

Yoriko co-authored THE THIRD CENTURY America's Resurgence in the Asian Era – a groundbreaking book on America’s strength as an open economy and diverse society during a time of great change. You can take a look book reviews from some of the most respected publications below...
 

What Asian Threat?
New York Times - Sun, 10/23/1988

By JOEL DREYFUSS – Americans have coexisted uneasily with Asia since regular contacts were established in the mid-19th century. Over the years, the Asian challenge has undergone transformations. At first it was the ''yellow peril,'' an expression of blatant prejudice triggered when poor Japanese and Chinese farmers attempted to immigrate to the ''rice country,'' the expression in Chinese characters for a bountiful America. American fears were fueled by Japan's expansionism in the first half of this century, reached a peak after Pearl Harbor in the shameful incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II and flared again with the emergence of Communist China in the late 1950's.
 

Morning in Asian-Pacific America
Los Angelels Times - Sun, 11/20/1988

By FRANK GIBNEY – When Americans buy a cerebral book these days-and this unsuspected vice seems to be growing among us-its theme is apt to be black and gloomy: One way or the other, the country is going to the dogs. Either we have shot our bolt as a political mover and shaker, about to join the British Raj and Austria-Hungary on history's imperial dust-bin; or else we have squandered our economic advantages so shamelessly that America's only hope is to follow and, if possible, imitate every chapter in Japan's current business success story. (This mood of intellectual pessimism contrasts interestingly with the tonnage of self-congratulatory essays on Japaneseness (Nihonjinron) now being ground out by our transpacific neighbors in Tokyo.)

Is Asia America's Friend or Foe?
CNN/Fortune - Mon, 12/19/1988

Two new books offer conflicting answers. The case for peaceable co-prosperity looks stronger than the case for manning the guns.

By JOHN STARRELS — One of the untold stories of this election year is the disappearance of the competitiveness issue -- you remember, the wrangle about the United States losing global market share to more efficient competitors and just maybe losing the store in the long run. A year ago this was widely viewed as likely to be a major theme of the upcoming presidential campaign, and in the spring it built up a bit of steam. But the subject never took off. Why not? An examination of two new books on America's economic ties with Asia helps supply an answer.

Japan In the Mirror of Our Times
The Boston Globe - Sat, 10/29/1988

By David Warsh — Since the end of World War II, America's view of Japan has been made in Cambridge, Mass. First there was Henry Rosovsky, with his early reports on the Japanese industrial renaissance. Then Edwin Reischauer educated a generation of scholars and diplomats, then served for many years as ambassador. Ezra Vogel was the first to sight Japan as "Number One," and Roy Hofheinz wrote a less-noted book called "The East Asia Edge." It argued that Asian producers naturally would take over the world's high- tech markets, leaving America to serve as bread-basket and lumber-yard to the world. Harvard's Tom McCraw, George Lodge and Robert Reich have called attention to the rivalry. Lester Thurow, the MIT Sloan School dean has taken the quest for metaphor a st ep further when he asks whether the next step in American-Japanese relations is guerilla war -- or big bang?