Rating: 
Summary: utter schlock
Review: A few years back while living in Taiwan (having already lived in Japan and Korea) a relative of mine saw this huckster on Booknotes and was convinced that this was gospel. Unfortunately, they sent it to me. I was able to flip at random in this book and find nonsense. I have yet to meet a single American who's lived in Asia as an adult who can read more than a little bit of this book. It's filled with inaccuracies that read like an East Asian government's propoganda machine.I've spent nearly five (5) years of my _adult life_ in East Asia, like the place, and find it very interesting, but this book is fantasyland.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining and accurate
Review: I have read many books about Japan before and after living there for many years. No one can write a book that is 100% accurate, but this comes very close. By far it is the most entertaining.
Don't bother with anything written any earlier.
Rating:
Summary: A great first look at Asian politics, society, etc. today
Review: In part of my professional life, I get to teach about Asian politics. I've long been looking for a book that will give my students insights into cultural traditions, social structures, etc. that have helped make both the region's economic successes of the last decades and its troubles of this one. This is the book. As one other reviewer here suggests, Reid does not have all the answers. But, his ability to draw on daily live and build out to broader cultural and social trends is remarkable and reinforces what I've read in more specialized and systematic books. But, if, like my students, you need/want a good first glimpse at what makes Asia different and what we could learn from it, this is the place to start. Besides, I haven't laughed so much in weeks.
Rating:
Summary: I Couldn't Put it Down!
Review: T.R. Reid manages to explain a topic as vast as the Far East in a serious but entertaining book. Reid describes his experiences in Japan as he navagates Tokoyo, and eventually enrolls his young daughters in a Japanese elementary school.
Reid became enchanted with Confucius, and my guess is that he had to have missed other factors that contribute to the Asian mind. He glosses over Taoism and Shinto in a few short paragrahs while spending and entire chapter on the history of Confucian thought. Nonetheless, the book managed to be a page turner.
T. R. Reid is a reporter for the Washington Post and a commentator for National Public Radio.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating, albeit sometimes tedious look at Asian society
Review: This book is a revealing look at Asian society and its striking differences, as well as similarities to Western society. The reading is sometimes a bit tedious and repetitive. The author attempts to write both a scholarly treatise as well as a easy-to-digest read and the two objectives sometimes clash. The book excels when it gives insight into Asian attitudes: for example why they may say yes when they mean no, why companies avoid layoffs, etc. Especially fun are his numerous snippets of everyday Japanese life. Ultimately, however, TR Reid offers only a few thoughts regarding how Western society might change its values to obtain the benefits he sees in Asian society.
Rating: 
Summary: Opens a window to the east
Review: This book is not written as a scholarly treatise on eastern culture. It is fine reporting of what a westerner needs to know to hope to have a clue in how to get a handle on the east. Mr. Reid isn't trying to persuade the west to become the east nor is he trying to tell us all there is to know about the east. He energetically reports to us what he and his family learned about the east while he was stationed in Japan as bureau chief for the Washington Post. It is a very fun read. Of course, if you are deeply familiar with Asia, this book may seem superficial. How could a work of introduction seem any other way to the initiated? But for nearly all of us who have lived our lives in the west but have had some exposure (or no exposure!) to the east and would like to understand a bit more about such an important part of our world culture, Mr. Reid has done a great service in giving us a good basis for further investigation. After you read this book your travel and reading about the east will be enriched. And that is a good enough reason to read and enjoy this book. It needn't be the all and all tome of the east. Mr. Reid's argument certainly isn't a book about east versus west. He is simply trying to use our native understanding of the west to see the east a bit more clearly and then to use the east to let us see ourselves more clearly. After I traveled and spent a couple of years abroad as a young man I could see America much more clearly than I had from simply living in the US. Over the years I have come to appreciate our country's strengths ever more deeply and I think Mr. Reid does a great job in trying to give that same sense to those who haven't been so fortunate in spending extended time abroad.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining but Superficial Cross-Cultural Study
Review: This is a mostly entertaining and enlightening study from Reid, a foreign correspondent who has lived in Japan and traveled throughout Asia. Reid's concern is not the economic success of East Asia, but what he calls the "social miracle." This would be the great civility, politeness, high educational standards, low crime, and all-around successful social stability of Eastern Asian nations. Reid cites the deep cultural influences of Confucianism as the key to this success. Examples are the Confucian ideals of community, shame, and encouragement, which all contrast directly with the Western ideals of individuality, guilt, and punishment. Reid delivers these revelations in a very enlightening fashion and his writing is quite enjoyable, especially when talking about his Tokyo neighbor, the immensely polite and courteous Matsuda-san. However, Reid also learns that the most basic Confucian tenets of hard work and virtue are also core Western tenets, and that the West would be greatly improved by a return to those values. The main problem here is Reid's quite superficial interpretations of both Eastern and Western societies - he often talks like a sociologist but clearly isn't. In Japan especially, Reid probably saw mostly the politeness that the natives save for visitors, with little or no direct experience of real social problems. The book ends with very flimsy solutions, mostly concerning abstract concepts like morality, for the West to integrate Eastern concepts to everyone's social benefit. So beware of these superficialities in this otherwise enjoyable study of cultures that are both vastly different, but more alike than you might think.
Rating:
Summary: Good for light reading
Review: This is a very interesting book for those who are familiar with Japan. (This books claims to be about Asia, but most of the examples and stories are based in Japan). Actually, I've been living in Japan for over 6 years, so it's difficult for me to remember what it was like to come to Japan for the first time. By reading this book, I rediscovered some of my feelings and thoughts that I had at that time. Putting that aside, that is probably the major flaw of this book. It comes across as someone spouting off about his trip after his first time in a foreign country. There are too many generalizations and minor errors for someone who has lived in Japan. Also his overly-literal translations are just silly. If you've lived in Japan or have a lot of knowledge about Japan, you're not going to learn anything new. However, for those who are visiting Japan for the first time, this book will prepare you for your experience. It's an iteresting introduction to Japan and Japanese society.
Rating:
Summary: No, an old Japanese guy lives next door.
Review: This is one of those books that is hard to review, particularly in terms of stars. To me it teeters on the edge of three stars to four. Three seems harsh, but in ways appropriate. In "Confucius Lives Next Door" T.R. Reid attempts to expose and explain East Asia's 'second miracle'. The first miracle being the enormous economic gains of the last half-century that started in Japan and now encompass most of the Pacific side of that continent. The second miracle, in Reid's view, is the social stability, low crime rate, and overall quality of life that can be found throughout East Asia. Boiling a complex issue that spans billions of people, thousands of years, dozens of languages and scores of cultures, he concludes that Confucius is to blame. If that sounds overly simplistic, it is because it is; and inherently that is the problem with the book. Once again here we have a person trying to explain another culture(s) in simplistic historical solutions that fit many and divergent facets of a large swath of people. Yet, in certain ways Reid is on to something. Just as Western thinking finds its philosophical underpinnings in the influence of Plato, with a liberal sprinkling of hundreds of thinkers along the way, Asia -- particularly countries historically influenced by China -- owe the core of their philosophical and social thinking to good old Confucius, with a liberal sprinkling of hundreds along the way. That much is good. Reid had me at the Plato-Confucius comparison, and his chapter about the life of Confucius was educational. Most of his ideas appear to have been instigated by conversations with his next-door neighbor, Mr. Matsuda, who seems to be the wizened neighbor we all wish we had. But in this book I fear Reid has ordered more lemon chicken than he can eat in one sitting. His examples mostly draw upon his experiences from living in Japan for five years, and from examples gleaned from second-hand sources about other Asian countries. If these are meant to be end-all examples, then they do not work. Though I also feel that Reid was using the trips to an elementary school and to the Toyota plant and elsewhere to illustrate points and to tell stories. This is fine and dandy, but it does not serve such a high-powered thesis completely; so it must be read with a pinch of forgiveness. Anybody who bothers with these studies will know that it is not all sugar drops and robotic dogs in Asia and that there are actual social problems as divergent as the cultures of each country highlighted. To gloss over these problems and to smudge the lines between cultures (I know of few people who would argue that Japan and Singapore use similar methods to keep their streets safe) is acceptable only in a work that admits its simplicity. The final chapter of "Confucius Lives Next Door" attempts this in certain degrees to limited satisfaction. That being said, I have been a fan of T.R. Reid for a while now. His articles in National Geographic are always very lucid, and his sense of humor is a trait more people need to have who write on topics like these. For a while though he seems to abandon the humor and go pseudo-academic for good stretches of this book, which I think works only part of the time. Read this book as a collection of stories and it is worthwhile. But anybody who has spent more than a few months living in East Asia will feel they could have written half of this book.
Rating:
Summary: No, an old Japanese guy lives next door.
Review: This is one of those books that is hard to review, particularly in terms of stars. To me it teeters on the edge of three stars to four. Three seems harsh, but in ways appropriate. In "Confucius Lives Next Door" T.R. Reid attempts to expose and explain East Asia's 'second miracle'. The first miracle being the enormous economic gains of the last half-century that started in Japan and now encompass most of the Pacific side of that continent. The second miracle, in Reid's view, is the social stability, low crime rate, and overall quality of life that can be found throughout East Asia. Boiling a complex issue that spans billions of people, thousands of years, dozens of languages and scores of cultures, he concludes that Confucius is to blame. If that sounds overly simplistic, it is because it is; and inherently that is the problem with the book. Once again here we have a person trying to explain another culture(s) in simplistic historical solutions that fit many and divergent facets of a large swath of people. Yet, in certain ways Reid is on to something. Just as Western thinking finds its philosophical underpinnings in the influence of Plato, with a liberal sprinkling of hundreds of thinkers along the way, Asia -- particularly countries historically influenced by China -- owe the core of their philosophical and social thinking to good old Confucius, with a liberal sprinkling of hundreds along the way. That much is good. Reid had me at the Plato-Confucius comparison, and his chapter about the life of Confucius was educational. Most of his ideas appear to have been instigated by conversations with his next-door neighbor, Mr. Matsuda, who seems to be the wizened neighbor we all wish we had. But in this book I fear Reid has ordered more lemon chicken than he can eat in one sitting. His examples mostly draw upon his experiences from living in Japan for five years, and from examples gleaned from second-hand sources about other Asian countries. If these are meant to be end-all examples, then they do not work. Though I also feel that Reid was using the trips to an elementary school and to the Toyota plant and elsewhere to illustrate points and to tell stories. This is fine and dandy, but it does not serve such a high-powered thesis completely; so it must be read with a pinch of forgiveness. Anybody who bothers with these studies will know that it is not all sugar drops and robotic dogs in Asia and that there are actual social problems as divergent as the cultures of each country highlighted. To gloss over these problems and to smudge the lines between cultures (I know of few people who would argue that Japan and Singapore use similar methods to keep their streets safe) is acceptable only in a work that admits its simplicity. The final chapter of "Confucius Lives Next Door" attempts this in certain degrees to limited satisfaction. That being said, I have been a fan of T.R. Reid for a while now. His articles in National Geographic are always very lucid, and his sense of humor is a trait more people need to have who write on topics like these. For a while though he seems to abandon the humor and go pseudo-academic for good stretches of this book, which I think works only part of the time. Read this book as a collection of stories and it is worthwhile. But anybody who has spent more than a few months living in East Asia will feel they could have written half of this book.
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