Toward the middle of this detailed and thoughtful book, the author says his work is "about how different hopes for the West -- visions of another kind of West -- were glimpsed, of all unlikely places, on the Indian subcontinent."
Certainly it is true that by creating such bipolarities as East/West and them/us, the results include an amount of self-referential imaging. Asia serves as a mirror for Europe and America, reflecting fears, hopes and ambitions.
The mirror works two ways as well. The number of blond Japanese youth (blue- and green-tinted, too) indicates not only cultural panic, but a sincere form of self-searching. Foreigners by peroxide, the newly complacent find a kind of solace in imitation.