Turning the tables

by Daniel Burstein

In Turning the Tables, bestselling author Daniel Burstein has written a book that could totally reshape our thinking about U.S.-Japan relations. Until very recently, Americans felt out-competed and defeated by Japan, Inc. Then, suddenly, the Tokyo stock market crashed and the Japanese economic bubble burst. American fear of Japan subsided. Indeed, it has even become fashionable to dismiss the Japanese competitive threat. But in Turning the Tables Burstein warns that if Americans ignore Japan, we do so only at our peril. Japan will be back - leaner, meaner, and more competitive than ever before. Even now, despite the stock market crash, Japanese industry leads the world in ten "core competencies" critical to economic growth and the development of new global industries in the next century. Before we know it, the Japanese advances in robotics and "flexible manufacturing" will be the new gauntlets thrown down to American business, in the way that "quality" suddenly emerged as an issue in t