Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

Author(s): David Pilling

Asian

This is a both definitive and highly enjoyable book on how modern Japan works, from Asia expert David Pilling. Despite years of stagnation, Japan remains one of the world's largest economies and a country which exerts a remarkable cultural fascination. David Pilling's new book is an entertaining, deeply knowledgeable and surprising analysis of a group of islands which have shown great resilience, both in the face of financial distress and when confronted with the overwhelming disaster of the 2011 earthquake and resulting tsunami. Bending Adversity is a superb work of reportage and the essential book even for those who already feel they know the country well.


Product Information

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 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 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

David Pilling is the Asia Editor of the Financial Times. He was Tokyo Bureau Chief from 2002-08, and has won several awards for his columns on Japan and China. He is currently based in Hong Kong.

General Fields

  • : 9780241957677
  • : Penguin Books Ltd
  • : Penguin Books Ltd
  • : September 2014
  • : 198mm X 129mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : October 2014
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : David Pilling
  • : 2 x 8 colour plates
  • : 432
  • : 952.05
  • : 1
  • : Paperback