PERSPECTIVE ON THE U.S.-JAPAN CONFLICT : Wakeup Call from the ‘Rising Sun’ : We’re tempted to rage at Tokyo’s slurs, but the cool voice of a popular novelist offers a more constructive path.

Fortunately, it’s not bullets flying back and forth these days between the United States and Japan, but words do have the potential of fueling a serious political confrontation. First Shintaro Ishihara, in his book “The Japan That Can Say ‘No’,” then former International Trade and Industry Minister Yoshio Sakurauchi and now Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa himself have called Americans lazy, poorly educated and lacking a work ethic. As a Hollywood cowboy might have replied in a horse opera (once U.S.-made but now Japanese-made), “Them’s fightin’ words, pardner.”

But what exactly is going on here? A number of American commentators have pointed out that the Japanese are mostly saying things we’ve said about ourselves. And therein lies the rub. Just as Jews tell Jewish jokes that would sound anti-Semitic in the mouths of others, and families can be harshly critical of their own members but will unite against outsiders who attempt to join the fray, so the Japanese have violated our insider/outsider boundary.

This violation is surprising, since the notion of inside versus outside is highly developed in Japan. It may, in fact, be partly responsible for both Miyazawa’s and Sakurauchi’s remarks, since these were made in Japanese, to a Japanese audience, and neither man fully appreciated that “outsiders” were listening and would translate their remarks to the rest of the world.

Miyazawa’s words may also be an expression of Japan’s newly found pride in its economic prowess. As Ishihara argued in “The Japan That Can Say ‘No’, “ Japan is a powerful country now, and it should not play the role of perpetual “younger brother” to the United States. These sentiments are widely shared among the Japanese public.

Rather than bellowing like wounded bulls, what should Americans do? The answer can be found in books and articles by specialists on the current Japan-U.S. trade friction. These writers--most prominently Clyde Prestowitz, James Fallows and Karel van Wolferen--are sometimes called “revisionists” because they challenge conventional assumptions by American economists about U.S.-Japan relations. They argue that the United States must have an industrial policy that will enable it to live with, rather than be controlled by, Japan.

Although this message is slowly gaining adherents among American business leaders, it is still anathema to most of the Bush Administration. But a new novel by Michael Crichton, “Rising Sun,” may be about to change this. Like Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” which prompted Theodore Roosevelt to reform the meat-packing industry, it might even help produce a policy change.

Crichton’s novel is set in Los Angeles and begins with the murder of a blonde sexual adventuress at the opening of a glossy new Japanese corporate headquarters. As they investigate, three detectives discover that Japanese business interests have the power to block and manipulate them at almost every level--from paid-off mayors and police chiefs to university professors, newspaper reporters (of The Times, I’m sorry to say), and even some U.S. senators.

As one of the detectives comments, “If you give up control of your own institutions you give up everything. And generally, whoever pays for an institution controls it. If the Japanese are willing to put up the money--and if the American government and American industry aren’t--then the Japanese will control (things).”

Crichton has had the good sense to put such arguments in the mouths of many different characters and to convey more than one point of view. The most overtly racist remarks are uttered by detective Tom Graham, an angry, embittered cop; many of them are softened and explained by John Connor, a fiftyish retired detective who has lived in Japan, speaks fluent Japanese and understands the culture all too well. Connor has a slightly spoiled-priest, Zen-like weariness about him--the mien of the disappointed Japan-lover.

Connor has another detective helper, Peter J. Smith, the narrator of the book, with whom the reader is intended to identify. Smith gets to ask a lot of dumb questions about Japan, but he learns fast. He also, toward the end of the novel, falls in love with a Japanese girl, who--in the tradition of James Michener’s “Sayonara”--is portrayed as both smart and feminine, in contrast to Smith’s brittle ex-wife.

Best-selling novels such as Norman Mailer’s “The Naked and the Dead” (1948-49), Michener’s “Sayonara” (1954) and James Clavell’s “Shogun” (1975-76) reveal a great deal about American attitudes toward and impressions of Japan in times past. But while best-sellers may crystallize and give voice to our prejudices and concerns, they can also heighten and feed them. Thus, while I recognize that Eric Van Lustbader’s “The Ninja” (1980) and “The Miko” (1984) and Clive Cussler’s “Dragon” (1990) accurately reflect growing American fears of Japan’s economic prowess, I also deplore their shrill, paranoid tone and plots. Crichton has avoided this problem. His tone in “Rising Sun” is the coolest and best-modulated since John Marquand’s “Mr. Moto” novels. I would guess that Crichton gave serious thought to how to present the revisionist argument without turning his readers into Japan-bashers, protectionists or worse.

For those readers who are agitated or intrigued by his novel, he also appends an excellent reading list--not alphabetical, as he coyly notes, but in rough order of “readability.” In those terms, his own book must go to the head of that list.

I believe that Miyazawa’s remarks and Crichton’s novel (which is likely to become a big best-seller in the next few months) may serve as a salutary wake-up call for Americans. If so, the current war of words will have served a useful purpose. But if we Americans refuse to rethink and reshape their role in the post-Cold War, post-Gulf War world, then we are heading down a dangerous path.