“A century ago, when Admiral Perry’s American fleet opened the nation, Japan was a feudal society. The Japanese realized they had to change, and they did. Starting in the 1860s, they brought in thousands of Western specialists to advise them on how to change their government and their industries. The entire society underwent a revolution. There was a second convulsion, equally dramatic, after World War II.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Sooner or later, the United States must come to grips with the fact that Japan has become the leading industrial nation in the world. The Japanese have the longest lifespam. They have the highest employment, the highest literacy, the smallest gap between rich and poor. Their manufactured products have the highest quality. They have the best food.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Americans don’t understand. Because the Japanese system is fundamentally different.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Since 1987, there have been a hundred and eighty American high-tech and electronics companies bought by the Japanese.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“They have very sophisticated mapping software. It’s by far the most advanced in the world. The Japanese are becoming much better in software. Soon they will surpass the Americans in that, as they already have in computers.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“American news. Such nothing.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“The Japanese are masters of indirect action. It’s their instinctual way to proceed. If someone in Japan is unhappy with you, they never tell you to your face. They tell your friend, your associate, your boss. In such a way the words gets back. The Japanese have all these ways of indirect communication. That’s why they socialize so much, play so much golf, go drinking in karaoke bars. They need these extra channels of communication because they can’t come out and say what’s on their minds. It’s tremendously inefficient, when you think about it. Wasteful of time and money. But since they cannot confront – because confrontation is almost like death, it makes them sweat and panic – they have no other choice. Japan is the land of the end run. They never go up the middle… So behavior that seems sneaky and cowardly to Americans is just standard operating procedure to Japanese.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Basically, the Japanese have an understanding based on centuries of shared culture, and they are able to communicate feelings without words. It’s the closeness that exists in America between a parent and child – a child often understands everything, just from a parent’s glance. But Americans don’t rely on unspoken communication as a general rule, and the Japanese do. It is as if all Japanese are members of the same family, and they can communicate without words. To a Japanese, silences have meaning.’

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“The Japanese can be tough. They say ‘business is war,’ and they mean it. You know how Japan is always telling us that their markets are open. Well, in the old days, if a Japanese bought an American car, he got audited by the government. So pretty soon, nobody bought an American car. The officials shrug: what can they do? Their market is open: they can’t help it if nobody wants an American car. The obstructions are endless. Every imported car has to be individually tested on the dock to make sure it complies with exhaust-emission law. Foreign drugs can only be tested in Japanese laboratories on Japanese nationals. Foreign skis were once banned because Japanese snow was said to be wetter than European and American snow.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“In American organizations it’s all about who fucked up. Whose head will roll. In Japanese organizations it’s about what’s fucked up, and how to fix it. Nobody gets blamed. Their way is better.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Compared to the Japanese, we [Americans] are incompetent. In Japan, every criminal gets caught. For major crimes, convictions run ninety-nine percent. So any criminal in Japan knows from the outset he is going to get caught. But here, the conviction rate is more like seventeen percent. Not even one in five. So a criminal in the States knows he probably isn’t going to get caught – and if he’s caught, he won’t be convicted, thanks to all his legal safeguards.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“They [the Japanese] say Americans are too eager to make theories. They say we don’t spend enough time observing the world, and so we don’t know how things actually are.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“The American press reports the prevailing opinion. The prevailing opinion is the opinion of the group in power.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Here, everybody has to lock themselves up. Lock the door. Lock the car. People who spend their whole lives locked up are in prison. It’s crazy. It kills the spirit. But it’s been so long now that Americans have forgotten what it’s like to really be safe.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Because in America, you think a certain amount of error is normal. You expect the plane to be late. You expect the mail to be undelivered. You expect the washing machine to break down. You expect things to go wrong all the time.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“And you know every study of police effectiveness shows that American detectives either solve the case in the first six hours, or they never solve it at all.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Everything was connected, that was the secret. Wars were connected by arms manufacturers, the same arms manufacturers who made the guns used in robberies, who made the guns used by crazy people in America when they went on a rampage in a shopping-centre or hamburger restaurant. So already you had a connection between hamburgers and dictators. Start from there and the thing just grew and grew.”

Ian Rankin, Being Frank

“Business is their national sport, and, like most national sports, semi-sacred.”

John Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes

“Kruger found it amusing the way the Americans always put on a fresh shirt and combed their hair before stepping in front of the camera. Just like television reporters.

Michael Crichton, Congo

“America has a way of expressing things very pithily.”

Harold Robbins, Stiletto