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Das Buch (dt.Titel: "Nippon Connection") wurde 1992 geschrieben und das Grundproblem, der stark steigende Einfluss Japans in den USA, ist sicherlich seit der Asienkrise 1997 weniger drängend, aber immer noch existent - die USA haben nach wie vor eine extrem negative Handelsbilanz. Der Leser erhält auf einzigartige Weise einen Einblick in das japanische Denken und Wirtschaftsgebaren - das ganze wird nämlich über die spannenden Ermittlungen zu einem Mord bei einer japanischen Firma in Los Angeles vermittelt. Im Verlauf muss der eigens beorderte Japan-Experte John Connor immer wieder die für die amerikanischen Ermittler unverständlichen japanischen Verhaltensweisen erklären, und nur durch sein geschicktes und auf den ersten Blick manchmal widersprüchliches Taktieren können Fortschritte gemacht werden.

Natürlich schreibt Crichton aus amerikanischer Sicht und wahrscheinlich unterschreibt auch nicht jeder Japaner zu 100% die beschriebenen Vorgänge, dennoch wird man kaum ein Buch finden, das einen spannender an diese völlig andere Kultur heranführt. Ein geniales Buch - nicht umsonst ein Bestseller und auch heute noch absolut lesenswert!

Michael Crichton knows his trends. Airline safety, dino-mania, international trade... he's got them pegged. Too bad he didn't bother to learn much about international trade before writing this book, which repeats uncritically the silliest of the anti-free-trade arguments, arguments which have been posed and answered for the past two hundred years.This isn't the only book in which Crichton does this - "Airframe" has a ludicrous speech about safety regulation buried in the middle - but here, it plays a central plot role.Nowadays, of course, the theories of Japan's "managed trade" have been proven wrong by the state of their newly-punctured bubble economy, and some of the policy wonks and journalists who no doubt inspired many of the points in this book have turned around on the "Japanese wealth machine" view. I doubt many people will be reading this book in five or ten years, but if they do, it will be an amusing historical footnote to the times in which it was written - times in which people believed there was such thing as a "trade war," or that foreign investment was somehow bad, or any number of other discredited propositions.Of course, as before, the protectionists have been spouting off for two hundred years without coming up with a single new argument, and yet they still show up around election time every year, so maybe this book will still have an audience.

I am not a Crichton fan but for some reason always wind up reading his latest book. There is always at least something of interest there. So I was very pleasantly surprised with Rising Sun, a book that takes an unexpected turn for Crichton in that it is light on the science and heavy on character and plot. A murder mystery entangled in the complexities of Japanese business dealings in America, it provides Crichton with an opportunity - through several of his characters - to vent about Japanese culture and the problems American business has competing with them. The book works on several levels. It is an exciting mystery, an interesting exposition about Japanese business and culture and - as always with Crichton - a lesson in new technology. Whether the insights one gleans about the Japanese are true or not (and that was a controversial aspect of the book when first published) the image of them presented in the book is perfect to create the tension and intrigue that helps keep the plot ticking and holds the reader's interest till the end.

Best book, I've ever read!

A beautiful white girl is murdered in a new Japanese corporate building during a party. They have video evidence and the murderer, but that's where the plot thickens! I'd read the book before the movie (as always), and I couldn't even finish watching the entire movie because of the injustice done to the book! The movie was almost as bad as Disclosure's movie translation.