CAN JAPAN COMPETE?, by Michael Porter, Hirotaka Takeuchi and Mariko Sakakibara. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Publishing, 2000, 208 pp., $27.50 (cloth).

The title has got to go. "Can Japan Compete?" What sort of question is that? Of course Japan can compete. No one disputes that the country has world-beating corporations, great products and has set standards for manufacturing efficiency.

And everyone now knows that those companies are a minority in Japan. At the other extreme, sheltered domestic industries have been laggards, creating a "dual economy," as economist Richard Katz aptly describes it.

These three authors know it too -- even without the prodigious research that provides the foundation of the book. Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor, is perhaps the world's leading academic theorist on competition. Hirotaka Takeuchi is professor of corporate strategy at Hitotsubashi University, and Mariko Sakakibara teaches at the UCLA Business School after a stint at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry.