The Magatama Doodle: One Man's Affair with Japan, 1950-2004

Part personal memoir and critique, part professional flashback and socio-cultural commentary, The Magatama Doodle offers a remarkably direct, sometimes hilarious, sometimes astringent documentary record of the life and times of a young European banker living in Japan. (Magatama are ancient comma-shaped precious stones used by Japanese men in authority as a doodle image.) The memoir will be pure nostaligia for many readers; but then like magatama, the book reinforces a fundamental thread running through the narrative--namely that a deeply conservative ethos lies at the root of Japan's distinctive and much-admired culture and its political, educational, and managerial structures.