By Alex kerr

Dogs & Demons

Non-fiction

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.

When I completed writing Lost Japan in 1993, I was left with a kimochi (a feeling) that Japan’s concrete shrouded mountains and seashores felt very wrong. But it was only a kimochi.  Wasn’t this what every advanced country did in order to grow economically?  Aware that I needed to better understand what was going on, I set out to research, it took six years before Dogs and Demons finally came out.  I found that my instincts were not skew, that Japan has in fact not done what other advanced nations have done, that, for example, the construction industry is a scale of magnitude larger than it is elsewhere.

This and other issues underlie what I — and many Japanese — see as profound cultural trouble.  This book gives voice to these Japanese commentators who have so far not been heard above the chorus of Western praise for Japan’s postwar successes.