Rising Sun was a tough one to get through. It wasn't extremely long, but without having any prior knowledge of Japanese business or customs I found myself boggled by the details. Once finished, I felt it was a satisfying read, but not something I would have an interest in reading again. Rising Sun is a must for the more rabid Michael Crichton fans, but casual readers should pass this one by.

If you can manage to get past the racism, there is a dogmatic and unusual "who done it" in there.

Years after Jurassic Park and The Lost World, this was my next Michael Crichton, and was such a good thriller!

Nice characters, well developed with subplots, and twist after twist. And an amazing pace. I read this in english, and after some epic fantasy, i know it's a test to read some of it, not having english as your native tongue. But Crichton made everything a lot easier. And the ending was really rewarding. It's the kind of book i would recommeding if your trying to get back after some book hangover. Amazing.

But, yes, we need to talk about the racist and xenophobic take of the author about the japanese. Yes, he really elevates how the japanese are a advance kind of human, not just in the technological point, but in a spiritual one, but he doesn't do it nicely, in some pages. You can see some of it in John Connor's (not that one of the future) line on the end, about how they treat a "Gaijin". This book is that kind of, that people say that "you need to separate the book of the author", but it's not that simple. Things need to be noted and said. It's a great book, but with a lot of triggers and, again, people need to know what they're reading.

The comparison between Japanese business practices and American business practices made this book.

Upon reading this I'd have given it a three or better. But after a while, the mysogyny and the racism and the contrariness and the gullibility of the works as a whole really start to weigh on me.

More than a thriller, this has tremendous insights on Japanese culture. Especially on the way corporates work in Japan versus the way they work in America.
There are a lot of controversial narration regarding the relations between Japan and America.

Enjoyed it to such an extent that the murder mystery and crime investigations felt like a deviation :)

A decent mystery/crime novel. The technology has far surpassed the time when this was written. It is no longer a technological thriller so much as a good detective story.

I liked this book a lot, but then again, I like ANYTHING by Michael Crichton. This book was suspensful,containing murder and twisting, unexpected plot turns. It was set in a corporate, industrial setting, and involved international business. I will definately read this again. So sad to hear of Mr. Crichton's passing...a real talent now gone.

"This book is bad. Zero stars."

I love how Michael Crichton was not afraid to try different writing styles but after hitting such a home run with Jurassic Park, this seems a brave departure from a successful formula.

Rising Sun starts reasonably well despite a distracting Japanese tower setting in LA that might have well been called Nakatomi Plaza and a main character called John Connor who does not go on to save humanity from cybernetic robots. It initially seemed that Crichton was setting up a murder mystery thriller with technology and Japanese culture to flavour the adventure. However, it does not take long for the story to be bogged down with what appears to be the author having an axe to grind about Japan and the failure of the US to manage and prevent aggressive Japanese dominance of business and trade.

Having worked for a large US corporation for the past 20 years, I have had business relationships with Japanese suppliers and customers and I have professionally studied the evolution of Japanese manufacturing and corporate strategy - so I was watching very closely and in my opinion saw a lot of bias from Crichton coming through and at times the anti Japanese sentiments were uncomfortable to read. So for a large portion of this book I was taken out of the story and was cross referencing with my memories of reading academic business texts and it felt too close to real life work than escapism from just that...

Despite this, we get elements of what Crichton does well in earlier novels, combining cutting edge technology with suspenseful thrills and memorable characters. I am glad that we didn't get Lost World immediately after Jurassic Park and that Crichton was able to write the stories he wanted to tell.... Moving on to Disclosure next...

Full disclosure: I lived in Kagoshima city for 8 years as a boy, and I work with some Japanese people in my current job. My review of this book may be informed by those two facts.

Anyway:

I had forgotten how loathsome a book Rising Sun is. It's even worse all these years later — apparently ridiculous fearmongering doesn't age well.

Rising Sun is definitely a book of its time. Crichton wrote it in 1992, when the Japanese were spending a lot of money buying land and other assets in the United States. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing he was living in LA at the time he started work on Rising Sun, which might help explain his overblown sense of the extent to which the Japanese were snapping up the country. Still, Crichton managed to surpass even whatever Nippon-phobia may have existed then and push Rising Sun firmly into paranoia territory.

Besides the fact that Rising Sun dates itself with sermons about the Japanese and their warlike business mentality, it also manages to achieve something it accuses the Japanese themselves of by manifesting a fairly convincing appearance of racism. Yes, I'm aware of the irony of aiming this accusation at a book that's full of situations in which anyone who oppose the Japanese are called racists, but Crichton's book honestly does come across that way. The non-stop klaxon warnings combined with a caricature-like presentation of the Japanese makes it difficult to feel otherwise.

Sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and a little knowledge is what Crichton appears to have had about the Japanese.

The cherry on top of this putrid Sundae is John Connor, a character that manages to be mildly likable at times, but mainly exists to incite such frequent eye-rolling on the part of the reader that anyone else in the same room could be forgiven for thinking they might be witnessing some sort of unfortunate medical event. This is because John Connor knows everything, and I do mean everything. There's nothing that surprises him, nothing he can't immediately ascertain, no secrets so well concealed that he can't ferret them out with blinding efficiency, no cultural subtlety he hasn't mastered. John Connor is a god amongst detectives and gaijin alike.

Oh, and if the Japan-bashing isn't overt enough to discourage you, Crichton does a good job of making you wonder how he feels about women too, so there's that. Tropes abound in Rising Sun.

Put all these painful sins of writing together in one book, and it's really too much to bear. I may forgive myself before I die for rereading Rising Sun, but I'm not willing to bet a dollar on it.

This was a masterpiece!