Pacific Rift: Why Americans and Japanese Don't Understand Each Other

by Michael Lewis

In Pacific Rift, the best-selling author of Liar's Poker aims his skewering wit at the so-called cultural clash between Japan and the United States.

The result is a very different kind of book on US-Japanese business relations. In search of answers, Michael Lewis hits the road to report on the travails of two businessmen: one a rollicking American insurance agent who works in Tokyo, the other a Harvard-educated Japanese man employed by Mitsui Real Estate in New York City.

From the Ginza hostess bars of Tokyo to the “wine-bottle” gangs of Times Square—Lewis dramatizes tragicomic collisions between the two cultures and the basic misconceptions that Americans and Japanese have about each other.