Reddit reviews Shift: Inside Nissan's Historic Revival

Hmm, I wonder why it's not showing up in the thread... was it reported as spam or something? I'll repost it here then.

I'm going to assume that you're pretty serious about learning more about Japanese history/culture... these are pretty hefty books. I'm also listing them in (roughly) chronological order.

The Tale of the Heike -- It's required reading for all students in Japan and will give you a nice look at Japan's past (12th century). It should be required reading for all Japanese literature students, too. It's basically historical fiction gathered from a number of sources close to that time. There's a lot of history and a lot of embellishment.

Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Relationship to the Sword -- This book covers the creation and fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate, but it focuses especially on (surprise, surprise!) the relationship Japan has with the sword (as opposed to the gun). The katana is almost a legendary weapon for a number of reasons, and this book is a good read because it looks at why Japan never really had the same epiphany Europe did with respect to warfare -- or at least, not in the same way.

A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present -- I read this a few times and it's not a bad summary of how Japan changed over the years, though I'm not a huge fan of this book. The Tokugawa Shogunate lasted long enough that I feel that it deserves its own (series of) books, followed by one on the Meiji Restoration and another on the post-war period. Since it's all rolled up in one, this ends up being a dense Cliff Notes version of Japanese history. That having been said, though, this is not a bad book at all for what it is.

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II -- I'd probably consider this the definitive post-war Japan book. If you read only one book out of all of these, you should read this one.

Shift: Inside Nissan's Historic Revival -- I consider this a very important modern Japan book, even if you don't give a shit about cars. Japan has always been a very, very closed society and the corporations are no different. So when Carlos Ghosn came in and took over Nissan -- and turned it around -- it was a huge, huge thing. It still is, in many ways. If you want to read something about modern Japan being internationalized, this is one of the books to read.

Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan -- This is a pretty famous book for a lot of reasons. Jake Adelstein studied Japanese and became a reporter for the crime section of Yomiuri Shinbun, which is one of the largest newspapers in Japan. He wrote this book; it's filled with dramatization, self-aggrandization, and one-sided reporting, but it's still worth reading. Japan isn't the seamy mess of crime and slavery he makes it out to be, but it's not the technology and beautiful girl paradise a lot of other people want it to be either.


On the "fictional" side of things...

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword -- This was one of the seminal works on Japan, back during World War II. The problem is that there are so many bad assumptions and things that we now know are incorrect... but it was a seminal work for so long that it has really, really affected Western stereotypes of Japan. It's worth it just for that; not as a commentary on Japan itself, but as a critical reading of how the West did (and continues) to see Japan. Use it to focus your critical lens, so to speak.

Car: A Drama of the American Workplace

http://www.amazon.com/Car-American-Workplace-Mary-Walton/dp/0393318613/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406060725&sr=1-2&keywords=car+taurus

Shift: Inside Nissan's Historic Revival

http://www.amazon.com/Shift-Inside-Nissans-Historic-Revival/dp/0385512910/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406060790&sr=1-1&keywords=shift+carlos+ghosn