Acknowledgments
For advice and assistance during my research, I am grateful to Nina Easton, James Flanigan, Ken Reich, and David Shaw, all of the Los Angeles Times; Steve Clemons of the Japan America Society of Southern California; Senator Al Gore; Jim Wilson of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Kevin O'Connor of Hewlett-Packard; Lieutenant Fred Nixon of the Los Angeles Police Department; Ron Insana of CNBC/FNN; and Keith Manasco. For suggestions and corrections of the manuscript at various points, I am indebted to Mike Backes, Douglas Crichton, James Fallows, Karel van Wolferen, and Sonny Mehta. Valery Wright shepherded the manuscript through seemingly endless revisions, Shinoi Osuka and later Sumi Adachi Sovak assisted ably with the Japanese text, and Roger McPeek gave me his understanding of video technology and future security systems.
The subject of Japanese-American relations is highly controversial. I wish to state clearly that the views expressed in this novel are my own, and are not to be attributed to any of the individuals listed above.
Bibliography
This novel questions the conventional premise that direct foreign investment in American high technology is by definition good, and therefore should be allowed to continue without restraint or limitation. I suggest things are not so simple.
Although this book is fiction, my approach to Japan's economic behavior, and America's inadequate response to it, follows a well-established body of expert opinion, much of it listed in the bibliography. Indeed, in preparing this novel, I have drawn heavily from a number of the sources below.
I hope readers will be provoked to read further from more knowledgeable authors. I have listed the principal texts in rough order of readability and pertinence to the issues raised in this novel.
PRINCIPAL SOURCES
Clyde V. Prestowitz, Jr., Trading Places: How We Are Giving Our Future to Japan and How to Reclaim It(New York: Basic Books, 1989).
James Fallows, More Like Us: Putting America's Native Strengths and Traditional Values to Work to Overcome the Asian Challenge(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989).
–—, "Containing Japan," The Atlantic, May 1989, pp. 40-54.
–—, "Getting Along with Japan," The Atlantic, December 1989, pp. 53-64.
Peter F. Drucker, The New Realities(New York: Harper & Row, 1989).
Ezra F. Vogel, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979).
Karel van Wolferen, The Enigma of Japanese Power(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989)
Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982).
Michael T. Jacobs, Short-Term America: The Causes and Cures of Our Business Myopia(Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1991).
Robert Kuttner, The End of Laissez-Faire: National Purpose and the Global Economy after the Cold War(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991).
Michael L. Dertouzos, Richard K. Lester, and Robert M. Solow, Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge. The Report of the M.I.T. Commission on Industrial Productivity (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1989).
Pat Choate, Agents of Influence(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990).
Dorinne K. Kondo, Crafting Selves: Power, Gender and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
Kenichi Ohmae, Fact and Friction: Kenichi Ohmae on U.S.-Japan Relations(Tokyo: The Japan Times, Ltd., 1990).
Donald M. Spero, "Patent Protection or Piracy – A CEO Views Japan," Harvard Business Review, September – October 1990, pp. 58-67.
OTHER SOURCES
Daniel E. Bob and SRI International, Japanese Companies in American Communities: Cooperation, Conflict and the Role of Corporate Citizenship(New York: Japan Society, 1990).
Bryan Burrough and John Helyar, Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco(New York: Harper & Row, 1990).
Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1990).
Ronald Dore, Taking Japan Seriously: A Confucian Perspective on Leading Economic Issues(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987).
David Halberstam, The Next Century(New York: William Morrow and Co., 1991).
Kichiro Hayashi, editor, The U.S.-Japanese Economic Relationship: Can It Be Improved?(New York: New York University Press, 1989).
Kanji Ishizumi, Acquiring Japanese Companies(Toyko: The Japan Times, Ltd., 1988).
Gary Katzenstein, Funny Business: An Outsider's Year in Japan(New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1989).
Maryann Keller, Rude Awakening: The Rise, Fall and Struggle for Recovery of General Motors(New York: William Morrow and Co., 1989).
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers(New York: Random House, 1987).
W. Carl Kester, Japanese Takeovers: The Global Contest for Corporate Control(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 1991).
Philip Kotler, Liam Fahey, and S. Jatusripitak, The New Competition: What Theory Z Didn't Tell You About Marketing(New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1985).
Paul Krugman, The Age of Diminished Expectations: U.S. Economic Policy in the 1990's(Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1990).
Takie Sugiyama Lebra, Japanese Patterns of Behavior (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1976).
Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker(New York: Penguin Books, 1989).
Charles A. Moore, The Japanese Mind: Essentials of Japanese Philosophy and Culture(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1967).
Kenichi Ohmae, The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy(New York: Harper Business, 1990).
Daniel I. Okimoto, Between MITI and the Market: Japanese Industrial Policy for High Technology(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989).
L. Craig Parker, Jr., The Japanese Police System Today: An American Perspective(New York: Kodansha, 1987).
Michael E. Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations(New York: Free Press, 1990).
Jim Powell, The Gnomes of Tokyo: The Positive Impact of Foreign Investment in North America(New York: American Management Association, 1989).
Clyde V. Prestowitz, Jr., Alan Tonelson, and Robert W. Jerome, "The Last Gasp of GATTism," Harvard Business Review, March-April 1991, pp. 130-38.
Michael Random, Japan: Strategy of the Unseen(Wellingborough, England: Thorsons Publishing Group, 1987).
Donald Richie, The Films of Akira Kurosawa(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970).