This was an entertaining but trashy read, written back when Japan, Inc. was going to take over the world (a prediction that now seems quite ridiculous, in retrospect). Although the book (as usual) was better than the movie, it was flawed in the same way: the Japanese are depicted as a supremely competent but monolithic hivemind, all samurai businessmen in public, kinky perverts in private, and of course, completely alien and unlike "normal" (i.e., American) people.