Books, Arts & Manners: Mysteries of the Orient

The Enigma of Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless Nation, by Karel van Wolferen (Knopf, 496 pp., $24.95)

I remember, as a child, watching a TV science-fiction comedy in which, for reasons of the ridiculous plot, one character was duped into thinking that his spaceship had landed on an alien planet, whereas in fact it had been deposited in a suburban backyard at night. (I said it was ridiculous.) He groped his way into the darkened house, broadcasting a running commentary back to Mission Control, which was in on the joke. Eventually, he reported his way blocked by an extraordinary phenomenon: something like a series of parallel rectangular planes at right angles to each other and stacked each slightly behind the other. “He’s reached the stairs,” one of the controllers cackled.

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Peter Brimelow

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The Enigma of Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless Nation, by Karel van Wolferen (Knopf, 496 pp., $24.95)

I remember, as a child, watching a TV science-fiction comedy in which, for reasons of the ridiculous plot, one character was duped into thinking that his spaceship had landed on an alien planet, whereas in fact it had been deposited in a suburban backyard at night. (I said it was ridiculous.) He groped his way into the darkened house, broadcasting a running commentary back to Mission Control, which was in on the joke. Eventually, he reported his way blocked by an extraordinary phenomenon: something like a series of parallel rectangular planes at right angles to each other and stacked each slightly behind the other. “He’s reached the stairs,” one of the controllers cackled.