SOURCE: "Is Japan Really Out to Get Us?," in The New York Times Book Review, February 9, 1992, pp. 1, 22-3.

Nathan is an American novelist, dramatist, and critic. In the following favorable review of Rising Sun, he contends that Crichton's presentation of Japanese-American economic relations raises important questions "about America's condition at the end of the American century."

Every so often, a work of popular fiction vaults over its humble origins as entertainment, grasps the American imagination and stirs up the volcanic subtexts of our daily life. Uncle Tom's Cabin was that kind of book; so was Laura Z. Hobson's Gentleman's Agreement. Michael Crichton's eighth novel, Rising Sun, a thriller set against the background of current American-Japanese tensions, is likely to be another. Unlike the clear evils of slavery and anti-Semitism, however, the issues Mr. Crichton seeks to address succumb less easily to simplification. A shocking and ominous polemic, Rising...