Derided during the 1990s by foreign fund managers as "the sick man of Asia," Japan's weak growth performance after the economic bubble burst made it the butt of jokes for over a decade.
But the joke was on them in 2005, when fueled by an export-led recovery, reform optimism and a forecast end to deflation, Japan's stock market outperformed the West with an impressive 40 percent gain.
While sentiment cooled with the following year's 7 percent rise in the Nikkei index, the stars have aligned in 2007 for the release of Andrew H. Shipley's first book, "The Japanese Money Tree."