Ishihara The consequences of joining the club Jonathan MirskyINVENTING JAPAN: FROM EMPIRE TO ECONOMIC MIRACLE, 1853-1964 By Ian Buruma Weidenfeld, £12.99, pp.162, ISBN:1842126873 It didn’t last quite 40 years, but for much of the adult lives of Spectator readers Japan was Top Country; indeed, Harvard’s Ezra Vogel wrote Japan as Number One, and he and many others, including international corporate executives, sought to discover the secret of Japan’s success and wondered how it could be applied in the West. In the late 1990s the bubble burst: Sayonara, Number One. What happened? It is the considerable achievement of Ian Buruma’s...