Rising Sun by Michael crichton

When i first read this book, years back, i felt it was a decent thriller at best and was quite different from the usual science related thriller genre of Crichton, having read Andromeda strain and Terminal man prior. When i re-read it recently, i was amazed at the level of detail he has captured about the japanese culture, mostly the negative aspect or his critical view of their persona and how they deal with business. In fact, till a few years back, most of his caricatuirsh..err..characterisation of Japanese could've been attributed to how US was viewing China. And now with the focu shifting sharply on India, the pattern seems to be consistent, the more a country or its culture is vilified in novels and movies it becomes as much obvious as to the competitive/threat level perceived by the then government. There used to be a punny saying that, whatever Americans invented, Japs sold it better and made money out of it. And automobile industry was one that would've witnessed several corporate wars, with some directly involving the governments and them throwing their weights behind their companies and the eventual aftermath. In fact many drama series from the early 2000's would've one middle aged guy, often cribbing about how Toyota cars were inferior to Ford and owning a Prius was seen as feminine etc. 

Coming back to the book, this time, the arena is Information technology with Japs slowly taking over the cutting edge tech companies of US and how their lobbyists successfully manage to circumvent any law posted to prevent such events. The story begins with a muder investigation at a leading Japanese organization's party in their own premises, to investigate which they request for a specific liasion officer to accompany the detective in charge. The Liasion officer takes the help of another senior officer who is well versed in not just the Japanese language but also their culture. They slowly unravel the several layers of the mystery that had been hiding in plain sight, some by account of their detective work and mostly due to the in depth cultural knowledge carried by the senior officer. During the course of the investigation, the liasion officer gets the ringside view of how business is war fought in boardrooms and the extent to which companies go to gain foothold of latest technologies and how far US had been left behind in the scientific race, with several situations and anecdotes painting the US as a poor soul being the victim of ruthless Japanese. Eventually they find out the perpetrator who happens to be the very person who brought them into the case and his ending is an equivalent of a samurai facing his sentence. 

The book has several wow moments and quite some repetitive sections. Understandably it has already been made into a movie and considering recent developments, the day is not far when an Indian company is presented as the evil conglomerate taking over US tech by stealth. As i write this, Musk is already at war with Ambani and from an Indian perspective it looks the other way round. Whether the bread falls on the toasted side as always, only time will tell.