Rating: 
Summary: Rising Sun is a miss
Review: Michael Crichton's books are hit or miss. Rising Sun is a miss. I think it's supposed to be taking place during the mid to late 1980s when there was an influx of Japanese business ventures in the United States -- especially in California. I remember the xenophobic response from some people of my parents age and especially of people my grandparents age (not everyone, of course). As a teenager, I was surprised, confused and later embarrassed by the reactions of my relatives.Rising Sun is clearly playing into those sentiments and frankly I don't like it. Both cultures, American and Japanese in this book are reduced to stereotypal representations making for a boring, predicatable and insulting read.
Rating: 
Summary: Has its moments...
Review: Crichton does seem to have a thing about protagonists who are single fathers, or who might as well be. With the exception of the main character in AIRFRAME, has he ever written a competent and caring young mother? Peter Smith, the protag of RISING SUN, is a divorced father whose ex-wife literally can't be trusted to change their two-year-old's diaper and do it right. He's also a police lieutenant who has switched from being a detective to the press division - and from there, to being the department's VIP liaison specializing in Japanese VIPs. It's his job to respond whenever a Japanese diplomat or executive gets in trouble with the local law, so that the incident will do as little public relations damage as possible. So one evening as he's studying Japanese (a requirement of his relatively new position), he's called in to smooth matters between an obnoxious detective and the owners of a new office building. Right at the start of their star-studded opening party, those owners have to deal with a murder in their boardroom.
Competent writing (I'd expect nothing less from Crichton), a decent although not wonderfully inventive plot, and fairly interesting characters don't save this novel from bogging down whenever the author decides to give his readers a lesson in history, politics, and economics as those disciplines relate to U.S./Japanese relations - especially to the well-known "buying up" of U.S. real estate and businesses by Japanese investors. I got the feeling that this book was written to sound a warning, not to tell an entertaining story. Yet it does have its moments of crackling suspense, and the relationship between old Japan expert Captain Connor and the much younger Lieutenant Smith comes across both believably and amusingly. Not a total miss, but not Crichton at his best, either.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor excuse for a thriller
Review: Rising Sun was a terrible read. Crichton uses one device throughout: the old hand knows everything an hour before the young guy and slowly reveals it to him. It's tiring and monotonous. Never mind the even more monotonous lectures on the differences between American and Japanese business cultures.
Rating:
Summary: Clumsy At Best
Review: "Rising Sun" can't decide if it wants to be a polemic against Japanese business practicess or a murder mystery thriller, so it tries to do both. The result is clumsy at best. Long stretches of the book delve into the Japanese issue without any apparent connection to the plot. For example, the main character will happen to be standing in a waiting room, and listen as a couple of guys standing near him talk about the latest dastardly dealings of the Japanese -- very convenient, and very unconvincing. Crichton makes some stabs at giving his characters some personality, but it doesn't really work. All too often, Officer Smith comes off as the unwitting foil, his only function to be the innocent naif slowly waking up to the Japanese plot to take over the US. Connor, his detective mentor, has an annoying habit of making mystifying pronouncements about the sly Japanese character. Fooey.
The murder mystery is at least somewhat interesting, but in the end it is pushed too far into the background to really steer the book.
I would say that the book does come across as somewhat xenophobic. I'm too young to remember the very real paranoia in the 80s about the Japanese buying up the country, but this book seems to capture the era pretty faithfully. In the end it was more interesting to me as a time capsule of that era than as anything else. One wonders what Crichton would write as a follow up to this book, considering the way the Japanese bubble burst and the US's economic expansion in the 90s. Perhaps he can write a new book about the rising Chinese superpower?
Rating:
Summary: Crichton again appeals to our fears to create a thriller
Review: Michael Crichton provides another successful, if somewhat dated murder investigation thriller based in part on the exaggerated possibility that Japan culture and economic power will overwhelm America. Like many of his books, he immerses himself and the reader in the knowledge of the subject, but in the sum, denegrates and distorts the subject so as to provide a more exciting read. Parallels can be seen in Airframe (says he loves planes, writes about how they are likely to fail), Jurassic Park (likes biotech, writes about how recreated dinos will eat humans), Adromeda (Dr. Crichton writes how medical research creates a bug that runs amok), Prey (He says he love technology, but here nanotech is the latest people killer). His latest as of this writing is State of Fear, where he argues that the scientists agreeing on the evidence of global warming are wrong and are controlled by an unnamed cabal of nations that wish to keep their citizens in fear. Enjoy his books and his research (often correct), but forget his didactic, incorrect and hippocritical conclusions. They just sell books.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Mystery
Review: Michael Crichton's Rising Sun is a novel filled with mystery, that once you pick it up it's hard to put it down. Out of all the books I've read this has to be one of the all time best. If you're looking for a book that you can't put down than this would be one for you to consider.
The story takes place in Los Angeles, California and progresses over the course of three days. A detective for the Los Angeles police named Peter Smith received a call from another detective named Tom Graham about a homicide in a new Japanese run building. Smith is then asked to become partners with a retired detective named John Connor to solve this homicide mystery. The two travel to the building and investigate the murder of a woman who was found dead on a table. They only come to discover that there is almost no evidence of who or how she was murdered and even if it was murder at all. The story goes through a great amount of puzzles and fighting breaks out between some of the investigators over this murder just to find out who, what, when, how and why this murder was committed.
Crichton shows a mastery of comparison of two extremely different cultures in this book. The Japanese are shown how they look down upon Americans as slow, stupid, and lazy people. It often looks stereotypical at times but at most points it seems as if its been backed by experience. He represents the Americans as both racist and dedicated to finding out what has happened to this girl. Graham is the racist in the story and both Conner and Smith are the dedicated hard working ones. The two cultures seem to clash in their ideals of each other and that's just how Crichton makes this story more than just a murder.
The book starts right off by displaying cultural background just with its title. Rising Sun, represents the red sun on the Japanese flag and also how there is a big difference between the Americans and the Japanese. Crichton throughout the book displayed his knowledge of both of the American and Japanese culture and how they clash with each other.
This is a great book, especially if you enjoy mystery and how crimes are solved. Also, its interesting to see how the cultures between both the Americans and the Japanese. Michael Crichton has created a mystery that will keep you reading until the end with almost no stops in between. I highly recommend this book to almost anyone because of its on the edge of your seat way it seems to affect you as you read it.
Rating: 
Summary: The least of them
Review: Rising Sun is overtly negative towards Japanese people and culture. Various characters who are and who are not Japanese express intense dislike and suspicion towards that nation and the people of it.
It does seem reactionary in the same vein as the "yellow scare" and internment of Japanese citizens of America during WW2. Interestingly enough, the internment of Japanese in America and the confiscation of their businesses and homes is not addressed as part of the historical context and background of the story. I thought that would have been fair and a little more balanced when considering Japanese/American business and social relations.
But no, the entire premise of this book is based upon unrelenting fear, suspicion, paranoia, and wide-reaching stereotype of an entire culture. What is also disturbing is that Crichton chose this novel, out of all of his novels, to tell in the first person (unless I missed some). Which, obviously, removes the normally more clinical, objective storytelling perspective of his other novels. It becomes more... personal.
The main character (who is white) interacts with two other white men Connor (a mentor and retired police man) and Graham (a cartoonishly racist cop) to solve the case. Connor holds forth and pontificates as the "expert" on all that is Japanese. Connor and makes his judgements on their character (the Japanese are racist, underhanded, anti-American, and don't play fair). Graham mouths off sick, outrageous pronouncements that drive the reader away from his insight towards the waiting, moderate, all-knowing arms of Connor. The main character passively observes and absorbs all and serves to translate for the reader how to feel about the various views.
Crichton heads off, or attempts to anyway, accusations of Japanese-bashing by rewarding the main character with a romantic interest who is half black and half Japanese. In this way, further Japanese bashing occurs under the cover of the black-Japanese woman when we learn that she hates Japanese, despises them, and expects and needs and desires them to be guilty of what they've been accused because of how she was treated by fellow Japanese children as a child herself.
So the expert, the racist, the observer, and the victim all play their roles to construct a sinister image of Japanese work ethic and philosophy to present to the reader.
True guilt, once it is discovered, is also racially significant and further solidifies the theme.
Fortunately, two important changes were made to the movie version of the novel. One, Wesley Snipes was cast as the narrator/main character which somewhat softened and diluted the anti-Japanese message under the cover of his black identity. Two, Wesley's character is not a passive observer of Connor's expertise and dominent personality as the character is in the book.
This book is out of step for Crichton. And unlikeable.
Rating:
Summary: Sun's edginess loses its bite 12 years later
Review: I think 'Rising Sun' is among Michael Crichton's finest works, but time hasn't been too kind to it. With an early 1992 publication date (of the hardcover edition), it would have been conceived by Crichton during the height of the Japanese 'bubble economy.' The U.S. was awash those days in fears of Japanese economic hegemony. Various 'serious' books questioned whether the Japanese 'model' would supplant the US' as the dominant paradigm of the new century. Crichton's book - a very-well written, suspenseful thriller - plays off of those fears.
Well, a big 'oops' is in order here. Turns out the Japanese economy was very (VERY) overheated and a bloated Nikkei (peaking at over 40,000 compared to today's tepid 10,000 - 12,000 range) masked what now appear to be fundamental issues with the Japanese model - the paralyzation casued by excessive corporate cross-ownership of shares, failure of banks to recognize even the most obvious non-paying loans, massive transportation projects concreting the entire country without rhyme or reason...the list goes on. The upshot is an economy that has run - at best - sideways for 12 years or more.
Kudos go now to Prime Minister Koizumi who really seems to be tackling these issues head-on and making good progress (most notably in bank reform). But the effect of the last 12 years is to really take the steam out of edgy, confrontational books like 'Rising Sun', which is actually a critique of Japan itself masked as a thriller. It's a shame because the book itself is quite a ride and a masterful novel of suspense. I know it sounds like a tired cliche, but I literally couldn't put 'Rising Sun' down and read it straight through in one extended sitting. If you do read it now, just remember that Crichton's book is predicated on the perception of Japanese power, circa 1989 - 1990.
Rating:
Summary: A disappointment
Review: Instead of being an engaging novel, Rising Sun was a political platform from which to vent about the disintegration of the American economy at the hands of the Japanese. In an attempt to make this long-winded speech into a ficticious "story", the author offers us faded characters, and dialouge that is unimaginative, listless, and after a while, irritating. The murder of the young Japanese woman...the event from which the novel supposedly emerged, is apparently still a mystery..an occurance with no meaning, no relevance, and no motivation. This was a disasterous divergence from the author's usual genre.
Rating:
Summary: Special services liaison
Review: To the Japanese business is war by other means. What is the Nakamoto murder and 12 years after this book's writing can it still hold a reader's attention? The answer is yes.
Special services is a diplomatic detail in the LAPD. A homicide is reported at the Nakamoto Tower. A caucasian woman has died. Peter J. Smith has been assigned to the Special Services detail for the past six months. An experienced officer, John Connor, tells Smith that a foreigner can never master the etiquette of bowing.
The ninety seven floor building had been constructed from prefab units from Nagasaki. In the 1970's 150,000 Japanese students a year were studying in America while 200 U.S. students were studying in Japan. Peter Smith is dealing with Mr. Ishiguro. A very important business reception is taking place and Mr. Ishiguro does not want his guests to be bothered by any aspects of the investigation whatsoever. Every homicide scene has energy.
The author states that Japanese people are sensitive to context and behave appropriately under the circumstances. There is a shadow world in New York and Los Angeles and other American cities available only to the Japanese. Two men had already searched the victim's apartment. In Japan every criminal is caught. There is a ninety nine per cent conviction rate. In the U.S. it is seventeen per cent. A crime occurred with the expectation it would not be solved.
In Japan scandal is the most common way of revising the pecking order. Officer Smith would like to find a house suitable for raising his daughter but has found that the real estate prices are beyond his means. National cultures clashing create fragility in understanding as does the clash of business cultures. Out of the blue it would seem the two police officers are the subjects of bribery attempts by the Japanese.
The solution of the crime is elaborate and laid out with care. All in all the story is very engrossing.
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