Book Review: Rising Sun

Author: Michael Crichton

Reviewer: Mark Groenewold

Date: October, 2005

I like Michael Crichton. I have almost all of his books. I am a huge fan of Eaters of the Dead, the novel taken from Beowulf lore and made into the very fun and excellent film, The 13th Warrior. I even liked Sphere and Congo, two books which most critics hated. I have read The Great Train Robbery, Jurassic Park, Lost World, The Terminal Man, Airframe (which I read while flying to Canada!), and all the other novels and shorter works I could find too.

Michael Crichton knows how to write, and he knows how to keep our attention. I read this book when it came out several years ago and I thought it was lame then just like I do now. The only thing worse than this novel was Sean Connery’s Japanese accent in the movie, of the same title starring Wesley Snipes who is renowned for his tremendous acting abilities. Sorry Wes, stick to Blade. You are really groovy as a vampire hunter.

The problems with this book are not that they don’t tell a rollicking good story. The plot, and sub-plots, and twists and turns are just fine. Michael Crichton is an excellent story-teller and he keeps us turning the pages one after another. The primary concern I have with this book is that it is over the top when it comes to caricaturizing the Japanese as a people and as a nation. It was just too much.

Crichton brings his social-political concerns to the fore when he fuses those thoughts and ideals to fiction. Most times this works fine, but when we get to identifying peoples of different nations as having general tendencies and motivations, we really step into some murky water. I would have much preferred a book that did not so obviously pit East vs. West, Japan vs. America.

The Japanese are crafty. They are sneaky. They are completely enigmatic and thus untrustworthy. They lust after, desire, entrap, and abuse hot white women. They are all xenophobic haters of our way of life. We must stop them dagnabbit, and by George we are going to do that!

The Japanese have been far too cunning for their own good. They are trying to take over our way of life. They are trying to pull us into their next bid for world domination! We will stop them, unravel their miscreant plots, and expose them for the devils they are!

This book would have been a hundred times better if the investigators and protagonists were Japanese themselves. That would have taken all the bullets out of the guns of people who would naturally object to the text. This book would have been way more interesting if there was bit more cultural ambiguity within the text. One character is Japanese by birth, but she is slightly deformed and thus not really “the Japanese we must worry about”, and a prop to demonstrate just how wicked, exclusive, and xenophobic the Japanese “really” are. The devices used in this book to “uncover” national hatred and imperial desires fused into contemporary Japanese business practices are just too overboard.

I think that I can safely criticize this book for being excessive. I am no Japanese apologist. Just take a look at all the other books I have reviewed here on this site, and the variety of concerns I express in the many articles that are here. There are lots of things about the Japanese way of doing things, the Japanese government, Japanese society and social pathologies that I have many issues with and concerns about. Sometimes I think I am TOO critical, but obviously not as critical as Mr. Crichton.

What would have happened if Michael Crichton has substituted the Japanese characters for Jewish characters? What if this story was a conspiratorial tale of how Israel is trying to take over America? What would have happened then? What if Crichton substituted all the evil characters in the book for Germans or Cubans?

I can only imagine the protests, and the outrage. And I would agree with the protesters. It would be a bit much.

Not your best book, Mr. Crichton. Not by a long shot.

I think I’ll go back and read Eaters of the Dead again.

Mark Groenewold
Kanazawa, Japan
October, 2005