The Ministry: How Japan's Most Powerful Institution Endangers World Markets

Hartcher's account is the story of a ministry who arranges marriages for its key personnel, a place where employees rarely go home, and where staff members routinely die of exhaustion caused by overwork. Hartcher shows that even though the Ministry's nationalistic policies have helped to create phenomenally low unemployment, its resistance to open markets and increasing incompetence is a dangerous liability, not only to its own economy, but the global economy as well. Anyone who's interested in how Japan really works will find this an indispensable read.