March 1992
BookPage visits with
Michael Crichton
Is Michael Crichton a Japan-basher? Xenophobic? Worried? No. No. Sort of.
Interview by Eve Zibart
Michael Crichton's byline on a book has been bankable since The Andromeda Strain. He is the biotech and poli-sci-fi equivalent of Stephen King. But considering the reviews and interviews concerning his latest techno-thriller, which explores the labyrinthine corporate finagling of a Japanese high-tech firm in Los Angeles, Rising Sun (Alfred A. Knopf, $22.00) might have better have been named Rising Storm.
"It's been the most disturbing experience," says the alternately perplexed and angry novelist, whose war-of-the-worlds thriller was rushed into print ahead of its March Book-of-the-Month-Club date. "That's three times I've heard 'yellow peril.' Some people seem to think that I have overstepped some boundary of good taste, that we only ought to make nice-nice with the Japanese. They equate criticism of the nation of Japan with criticism of Asian people. It's narrow-minded, muddy-headed thinking."
Rising Sun, a play on the Japanese flag as well as that country's economic advance, is on the surface a police procedural: a beautiful young model/party girl with influential political "friends" is found murdered in the boardroom of a major Japanese industrial conglomerate on the night of its all-star opening. Since the boardroom is under the scrutiny of a battery of security cameras, it would seem the murder has been recorded. But first the tapes disappear, then they reappear, and the murderer is revealed right before the detective's eyes‹or is he? The answers come too easy, the Japanese stonewall too thick, its syndicates too influential . . . and before long, the two detectives -- the Japanese-speaking Connor and the novice Smith -- are dodging political and literal bullets.
"Originally I wanted to do something about the unrestricted sale of American technical start-up companies to Japan," says Crichton. "I think we're selling off our high-tech future in a way that's not being discussed. I don't care about Rockefeller Center, I don't care about Sony pictures or the Seattle anything; they may be symbolic, but I don't think they're really important. Japan is extremely good at exploiting high-tech possibilities. This is the best country in the world at innovating, but to allow our technological future to be harvested by our chief competitor is extremely dangerous."
It's the depiction of the Japanese corporate establishment, a series of interconnected industries that evokes a legitimate La Cosa Nostra, and its ethic that has raised the issue of Japan-bashing. But, as Connor explains it to Smith, it's really a matter of incompatible context.
"More than anything else," Connor tells Smith, the Japanese are "attuned to getting along with the group. It means not standing out, not taking a chance, not being too individualistic. It also means not necessarily insisting on the truth. The Japanese have very little faith in truth. It strikes them as cold and abstract. It's like a mother whose son is accused of a crime. She doesn't care much about the truth. She cares more about her son. . . . To the Japanese, the important thing is relationships between people. That's the real truth."
Crichton says the response to the book depends to a great degree on the reader's familiarity with Japanese society. "The book says that Japan is the most racist country in the world. If you know Japan, you say, 'Yep, that's true.' If you don't, you think I'm being racist." (In fact, racism cuts both ways in Rising Sun; one of the other cops is portrayed as mindlessly anti-Japanese.)
"We're dealing with two questions here. One is the reactions to the book itself, and most reviews I've seen have correctly seen it for what it is -- not bashing, not protectionist, but nevertheless pointing out a problem that needs to be addressed. The second question is the emotional climate we¹ve entered into at this particular moment, which is something over which I have no control." "I'm saying, 'This is the way Japan behaves; we may think it's predatory and collusive, but it's successful and it works.' Don't go over there and complain -- come to grips with it."
"The trouble with economics is that it's become so politicized. I'm trying to talk about what¹s external," to deal with realities rather than theories. "We've had basically one [economic] policy for 40 years; Japan and Germany have had different policies, and I think it's pretty clear who's doing better.
"The one thing everybody's passionate about is how much money they make. Real wages in America have been flat for 20 years, maybe 30 years depending on which figures you use; and that's an issue that cuts across Democrat or Republican. It cuts across who's President. We have a stagnant economy in this nation, and as far as I can tell nobody's disputing that. So when people say, 'Let's continue in the direction we have been,' I say, 'Why? What's so great about the post-war period in America?'"
"The most interesting thing is, in New York they say it's a book about Japan. In Washington, they say it's a book about us. And of course it is."
Though a novel, Rising Sun is being treated as virtual non-fiction because of its extensive discussions of video technology, congressional policy and high-handed high finance.
"Part of the artifice of the book is to make it appear as non-fiction. In fact, I was worried about a flat feeling in the first draft, but one of the first people I showed it to said it just read the way non-fiction does." And in fact, Crichton says, most of the things in the book are based on real life -- not the murder, of course, but the technology, the anecdotes, even the police detectives.
Crichton tracks issues for years, clipping and filing articles on a myriad of subjects: "The whole time I'm writing one thing, I'm reading in other areas, clipping stories and so on. I have clips on this going back to '87." These nascent plots gestate so long that he can't always remember the sources of particular information: "Somebody asked me how I knew about the exchange of business card," a rather formal requirement among Japanese. "I'd have to look through my files to find out where I know that." Hence the book's extensive bibliography, which Crichton says came from his looking through his shelves, seeing which books were "marked up" and figuring he must have used them for research.
Not only was the publication of Rising Sun pushed forward from March to February because of what Knopf called its "extraordinary timeliness," a film version, starring Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes and directed by Right Stuff Phil Kaufman, is already in the works; filming is scheduled to start in May, and it may come close to beating Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park out of the movie gate.
Meanwhile, although the prolific Crichton hasn't started another book yet, he has several projects vying for his attention.
"I'm trying to decide whether I should do something in the purely entertaining mode or continue in this more controversial way. My editor, Sonny Mehta, has a fairly high tolerance for controversy -- he was one of the first people to read the draft [of Rising Sun] -- so I told him about this book I want to do on the battle between the sexes, and he listened and then he said, 'That will be really unpopular.' I have to admit that gave me pause."
Surprisingly, he finds the "pure entertainments" harder to write.
"There's something about my writing that people find controlled or contrived. I find I really don't have much choice about what happens. The book declares itself at some point, so I'm as interested as anyone else to see what I wind up writing. I guess I have a certain amount of anxiety about it."
Eve Zibart writes for The Washington Post.
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