My firm is in the throes of defending a strike suit brought against Sea Shepherd by Japanese whaling interests. The Japanese whalers are seeking an injunction to stop Sea Shepherd. Under U.S. law, to get equity, one must do equity and one of the things we have learned about the Japanese whaler plaintiffs that we consider to be less than equitable, is that they have used nearly $30 million in tsunami relief money (I kid you not) to fund their whaling operations.
A young lawyer in my office was shocked that this would go on. Her shock stemmed not even so much from the fact that the funds would be used so deceptively, but more so from the fact that it seems never to have occured to the whalers that using tsunami relief funds to kill whales would be viewed with such horror by just about everyone outside Japan. I told her of how a friend of mine who is completely fluent in Japanese and lived there a long time is always telling me of how the average Japanese businessperson knows nothing of how Japan treated China during World War II, and so just assumes that China’s anger towards Japan is based on “jealousy.”
I then ordered her the book, Dogs and Demons: Tales From the Dark Side of Modern Japan.
Whenever I want someone to have a sense for Japan, I buy them Dogs and Demons. And whenever I want someone to get a quick sense for Korea, I buy them The Koreans: Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies. Both of these books have been recommended to me by countless people who really know Japan and Korea, respectively.
Well that got me to thinking. What is the one book to recommend to someone who wants to learn about the Chinese people? Now I know that no one book is going to do that so please nobody write about how no one book is enough, but is there any one book that shines above the rest for this? If I had to pick one right now, I would actually choose John Pomfret’s book, Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China. Though not really intended to provide an overview of a people, by writing about the Chinese students with whom he attended Nanjing University in 1982, Pomfret’s book at least makes clear (as if it were ever necessary) the great diversity that is China. But I am more thinking about a book that seeks to explain the Chinese people and why they are what they are.
What is that one book?