Braddon’s main purpose in the book is to show that the qualities which made the Japanese such successful soldiers in World War II are very much the same as the qualities which underlie their success in capturing world markets so relentlessly today. His first-hand account of the war in Malaya and of his years of imprisonment makes the first half of his book powerful and persuasive reading. The second half of the book – and of his argument – is more problematical, as I will show later. But the overall argument is certainly one that ought to make Australians (in particular), Americans and Europeans sit up and take notice. For if he is right, Japan will be by far the richest nation in the world, capable of exercising overwhelming economic power over the remaining OECD countries, not just by 2041 but by the year 2000, when her level of average per capita income will be far higher than that of the US and other industrial countries. By 1981 Japan was using two-thirds of the industrial robots in the world, not because the Japanese invented robots but because they are investing enough to be able to afford them. Americans are not – and Australians even less so. The Americans are investing eleven per cent of the GNP and the Japanese twenty per cent: but because the American workforce is increasing more rapidly than Japan’s (due to her postwar baby boom), Americans would have to be investing almost thirty per cent of their GNP to keep up with the Japanese on equipment per worker, according to the US authority on productivity analysis, Lester Thurow.

Why are the Japanese able to do this while the Americans and Australians are not? One reason is that the Japanese work a six-day week, take fewer holidays and rarely strike. Another is their very high rate of saving, and this in turn leads us back into a consideration of social attitudes and values of the kind that Russell Braddon is primarily concerned with.

It is hard to say whether Braddon admires the personal qualities of the Japanese or deplores them. (Not that this is a question of crucial importance; his main concern is that we should be making a far greater effort just to comprehend them.) He certainly does not belittle their valour and fighting prowess in World War II, the extraordinary skill of the small groups of soldiers who overran the numerically superior British forces in Malaya. After his capture, his guards were suddenly alarmed by a burst of gunfire in the distance. ‘Instantly – like American footballers executing one of their complex manoeuvres ... our captors sped into the jungle, fanning out as they ran ... No words of command, no hesitation ... So perfectly choreographed, and so unbelievingly economical.’

Something similar could be said about the way Japanese business firms conduct their operations throughout the world these days. They gather their information/intelligence comprehensively beforehand, do their homework and prepare their plans thoroughly so that individual and group actions and interests are well coordinated in much the same way as Braddon describes. The secret of Japanese success seems to lie in the way individualism and group requirements are harmonised, quite consciously, not seen as contradictory (or automatically reconciled by Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’) as so often in the West.

Why is this the case? Clearly it has a lot to do with basic values, traditions, upbringing and socialisation patterns and the distinctively Japanese cast of mind. Braddon touches on these things, partly in the context of his wartime experiences (especially the spirit of Bushido and the way it can be applied to the management or harmonisation of relationships within industry), but also in relation to the whole concept of ‘Japan Incorporated’. He has interesting chapters on their ethics and morality and on the essentially ‘elusive, elliptic and even obscure’ character of the Japanese language. I do not know whether experts would agree with all he has to say on these things, but he presents some striking contrasts. (English stresses principles of lucidity and logic which are the antithesis of the ‘principles of allusion and unassertiveness upon which Japanese is based. English speakers like to get to the point: the Japanese like to spiral around it.’) Serious students of Japan would do better to consult writers like Ezra Vogel (Japan as Number One), Ronald Dore or Chie Nakane on these matters, or even Ruth Benedict’s splendid, but somewhat outdated classic, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword – none of which, curiously, does he mention or cite in his bibliography. But as a tantalising introduction to these topics, Braddon’s views are interesting and very readable.

Where I find his basic argument questionable is in the latter part of the book, where he spells out the essential continuity he discerns between Japanese attitudes, motivations, and methods in the economic rivalries of the present-day world and those of the Japanese Imperial armies in World War II. The key to all this is most explicitly stated in his penultimate chapter where he devises an imaginary discussion with eight of Japan’s leading industrialists and intellectuals at which they speak (in the terms they had used in private to him) about the reasons for Japan’s ‘almost embarrassing’ success and the sad state of the Western world.

The interesting feature of this is, a little surprisingly, the diversity of views and approaches he depicts. ‘What matters most ... is the national spirit’ says one speaker – but he believes it is in a state of decay, even in Japan. ‘Economic growth seems to have caused a spiritual illness, and to cure it will take longer than it took to become ill.’ Yet the founder of Sony expresses a belief in Western individualism ‘which is not at all natural to Japan, where there is a belief in groups and harmony’. Common to all the speakers, however, is a confidence that nothing in the immediate future is going to change the current situation in which Japan’s commercial pre-eminence over the Western nations is almost unchallenged.

Only a fool or a clairvoyant would dare to say that Braddon is wrong in his basic argument about the seemingly inexorable economic success of the Japanese. But there is in fact much more to the explanation than he has told us. National spirit, the consensus-style decision-making process and the work ethic are, as he says, very important factors behind Japan’s extraordinary economic recovery from the destruction and disruption of World War II. Yet Japan is also running into the problems of affluence and greediness, some of which may prove as hard to resolve in due course as those of Europe or the USA or Australia. Her current political crisis is the most obvious case in point, but one could cite other, less striking forms of economic and social strain that are likely to slow down her rate of growth gradually. Mr Nakasone’s setback in the December 1983 elections was largely due to his failure to move against Mr Tanaka after his conviction over the Lockheed bribery affair – yet Tanaka’s faction was the only one to gain significantly at the poll. Nakasone stands to lose if he fails to act against Tanaka, but he will almost certainly be destroyed by Tanaka if he does. Is Japan becoming ungovernable? It would be grossly premature to jump to that conclusion – for, like Italy, the country will presumably continue to be administered efficiently by the bureaucrats despite governmental crisis. But what does this tell us about the sense of national purpose or consensus on goals and values which Russell Braddon sees as Japan’s secret weapon?

Braddon’s aim is, I think, as much to castigate the West for its lack of those qualities and for the decline of its work ethic than to provide an objective and analytical account of all the elements behind the Japanese economic miracle. I prefer the more limited and cautious explanations given by writers like Vogel and Dore of those elements (e.g. the consensus style of decision-making or the so-called ‘lifetime employment system’) to this kind of holistic approach. But Braddon was not trying to write a cautious and analytical book. He was trying to sound a note of warning to the West. And if his book is read by our business leaders, unionists and politicians, as it well deserves to be, for it is certainly most readable, it will at least set them thinking.