Book Review #1: “Confucius lives Next Door”
When T. R. Reid became chief of The Washington Post's Tokyo bureau, he and his family moved to Japan for an extended stay. Moving from the wide-open spaces of Coloroda to the noise, rush and crush of Tokyo. As Reid and his family were opting for total immersion in Japanese culture, they decided to live in a Tokyo neighborhood and send their children to public schools within Toyko. The book “Confucius Lives Next Door” is T.R Reid's account of their experience as an American family living in a country with the population of roughly 28,000,000 people. The book is also an analysis of East Asia's postwar economic miracle and what Reid sees as it’s even more important "social miracle," the creation of ordered, civil societies marked by "the safest streets, the strongest families, and the best schools in the world," where lost wallets are returned to their owners with cash intact, baggage can be left unattended in the busiest train station, and no one locks their cars or bicycles. Reid also documented his way of looking into the Asian century by looking at the crime, the drug use, family, children and the education within the
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R. Reid wrote Confucius Lives Next Door to illustrate how the teachings of the ancient philosopher and political activist, known in the west as Confucius, have influenced East Asian cultures as they have risen in economic power, how Confucian ethos are expressed in contemporary Japanese’s culture and how Confucius’s teachings revolve around loyalty between individuals and the groups they belong to. Those groups include one’s family, his neighbors, the company he works for or the school he attends, and any other group of people he associates with. Being a responsible member of a group is central to East Asian culture versus the Western, particularly American, focus on individuality. Reid’s book provides both anecdotal and empirical evidence on the cultural results of this group focused philosophy on