TRANSFORMING JAPANESE WORKPLACES, by Takashi Sakikawa. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 248 pp., $100 (hardcover)

The Japanese manager was once portrayed as a fearless samurai ready to take on the world. This was when Western companies and management scholars woke up to the presence of a potent competitor outside the Western world. High-growth Japan was going to overtake everybody else, and the Japanese manger was the harbinger of this unexpected challenge.

This looks like a story set in the remote past. As a matter of fact, it is one that many still remember from firsthand experience; however, the half-life of explanations of success in business tends to be short.