ould learn a lot from the thoughtful groupiness of Matsuda-san and Reid's other orderly Japanese neighbors. In Japan, for all its business and technological skills, social values take priority over purely economic ones. Reid's interesting description of a new-employee ceremony at a large Japanese corporation, in this case the electronic giant NEC, highlights his celebration of how Confucian ritual dignifies life in the Japanese workplace. He is well aware that his defense of Japan's tight society is subject to criticism, and at the end of his book he concedes the widespread corruption underlying so many Confucian societies, the diversity that makes overall judgments tricky and the racial homogeneity that may play a great part in enforcing Confucian harmony. But he sticks to his central thesis, fortified by his obviously pleasant recollections of living in Japan. There are, however, two flaws in this book that are hard to ignore. I share his fondness for Japan's national neighborhood. I lived there for 10 years with my family, and very happy campers we were. For the foreigner residing in this Confucian country is like a person given almost total access to an excellent, well-run and well-stocked club -- but without the need to pay any of the membership dues. When my friend the golfing executive talked about Confucianism, he was not smiling. He was, rather ruefully, acknowledging his membership in a society where conformity is inbred -- no need to be enforced -- and where the ethics of social relationships become a binding morality from which there is almost no escape. Over the years he became accustomed to making ritual bows to people he hated, promoting grinning idiots because their managers said they were ''sincere'' and ritually respecting authority that he knew to be defective. Which leads to an inescapable comment about Japan's present state of economic sickness -- a sickness that may yet drag the whole world down with it. The sheer ...
