Despite years of stagnation, Japan remains one of the world's largest economies and a country that exerts a remarkable cultural fascination. David Pilling's new book is an entertaining, deeply knowledgeable and surprising analysis of a group of islands that have shown great resilience, both in the face of financial distress and when confronted with the overwhelming disaster of the 2011 earthquake.
The resulting tsunami - which killed some 19,000 people - and nuclear catastrophe highlighted both the practical resilience of ordinary Japanese and a political culture of extraordinary carelessness and arrogance. Pilling describes the emergency and its aftermath, but then writes far more broadly about many aspects of Japan which are little known to outsiders and that do so much to explain these contradictory responses to the earthquake. To step behind the relative formality and restraint of the public Japan is to discover a far more anarchistic, peculiar and irrational place, about which this book is the perfect guide.
Pilling meets everyone from students to prime ministers in his quest to understand the history and values of this extraordinary country. Bending Adversity is a superb work of reportage and an essential book even for those who already feel they already know Japan well.
