Family Feud : Controlling wealth in the land of the rising sun : THE BROTHERS: The Hidden World of Japan’s Richest Family, <i> By Lesley Downer (Random House: $25; 385 pp.)</i>

Anthropologist Ruth Benedict told us a half-century ago that contradiction is the warp and woof of Japanese culture, that a people known for their sense of propriety, modesty and decorum could also be shockingly crude, arrogant and brutal. That is, human. Today’s sophisticated reader knows to distrust the traditional view of Japan as a quaint nation of docile and diligent citizens striving for perfect harmony. But discerning the true nature of the rough and tumble of personal and business life in Japan is not easy.

Lesley Downer’s fine new book “The Brothers: The Hidden World of Japan’s Richest Family” details the saga of an exceptional family that, although far from typical, is quintessentially Japanese and anything but quaint.

It is not a pretty sight, this chronicle of rags to riches. The beginnings of Yasujiro Tsutsumi, patriarch of the family, could not have been more humble. Nor could his childhood have been more wretched--a dead father, and a mother forced to abandon him to his grandparents rather than submit to the lust of her father-in-law. The young boy had drive and ambition, and the audacity that made him a real estate tycoon while almost literally still in his school uniform. Before he died he owned nearly a sixth of the land mass of Japan and controlled an empire of railroads, ski resorts, golf courses, hotels and assorted other businesses that placed his worth at an estimated $22 billion. His clever manipulations for land were the basis of this fortune, and his eye for opportunity served him well. When the peerage was abolished and taxes were levied during the Occupation after World War II, for example, Tsutsumi bought up the valuable estates of the now-impoverished Imperial princes, and created a chain of hotels, aptly named the Prince hotels.

He was ruthless in business dealings and appallingly relentless in his pursuit of women. “What shocked people,” writes Downer, “was not his promiscuity--that was to be expected of such a successful and energetic man--but the fact that he slept with ordinary women. Respectable men restricted their activities to geisha.”

Japan has had its share of rapacious business men, but none quite as successful. Tsutsumi had rivals such as Tokyu department store mogul Keita (“Goto the Thief”) Goto, who challenged him often, but Tsutsumi usually got what he wanted, and that eventually included power in high places. When his business ambitions were nearly sated, he developed back door connections in Japanese politics, had himself elected to the nation’s parliament and became speaker of Japan’s lower house of parliament and adviser to prime ministers.

Of Tsutsumi’s acknowledged children, two sons became rivals for control of the empire: Yoshiaki, offspring of his favorite mistress, and Seiji, son of his second wife. (Seiji’s sister Kumiko, a rebel at heart, defied convention and moved to France where she created an independent life for herself, and later joined Seiji in business.)

The brothers could not have been more dissimilar in temperament. Seiji, the eldest, threw himself eagerly into the student anti-government movement at prestigious Tokyo University, flirted with communism, led marches and denounced the privileged class of his own family. Yoshiaki, five years younger and much more conventional, was busy learning business at his father’s knee. When the time came to determine how the old man’s empire should be handled upon his death, Seiji understood that his rebellious background ruled him out. The image of Tsutsumi’s son at the head of a student mob could not be expunged from the memory of the bankers and bureaucrats he would have to deal with. Yoshiaki got the nod, and control of the railroad, the hotels, the golf and ski resorts, the vast land holdings.

Seiji got a nondescript department store in the wrong part of town. Sensitive, soft-spoken and artistic, Seiji always preferred the world of Japan’s artists, film makers, designers, poets and actors to the stuffy corporate board room and the cut-throat world of negotiation and speculation. He was also a prize-winning poet and writer, and much of what he wrote in novels about his family, thinly disguised as fiction, has long been taken as fact in Japan. Downer uses this material judiciously.

Despite his dreaded Communist background, Seiji was not without business acumen. In any case, Japanese students are expected to rebel in their early years, to get it out of their systems. The conventional wisdom in Seiji’s student days was that every freshman read “Akahata,” the Japan Communist Party daily, but by the senior year would read only “Nihon Keizei Shimbun,” Japan’s premier economic newspaper. Downer details how Seiji built the decrepit department store into the modern and sophisticated Seibu and Parco store chain and revitalized Tokyo neighborhoods with them. She tells how Yoshiaki bought a country baseball club, built a stadium for them in Tokyo against opposition and saw his Seibu Lions become the country’s top team. (In this regard, Downer, who is British, could have used a bit of coaching on the fine points of play after a bunt in baseball). In many of their business dealings the brothers were fierce rivals. For many years Yoshiaki’s Prince hotels would not accept the credit card of Seiji’s company.

The Japanese press, particularly the scurrilous weekly press, still feeds gleefully on the affairs of these enormously wealthy brothers, on their tax problems and personal lives and those of their families. Recently, attention focused on Yoshiaki’s Japan Olympics Committee dealings in getting the 1998 winter games for rural Nagano Prefecture, against the opposition of local environmentalists, a move that is likely to enhance the value of his properties in the area.

Yet whatever the brothers do in their business and personal dealings is shadowed by the spirit of the patriarch, who, in typical Japanese fashion, has been made immortal within his company. Every day since his death, selected employees of Tsutsumi’s holding company, Kokudo, have meticulously tended his grave. At sunset and again at 6 a.m., they toll the bronze bell in his memory every day of the year. At special ceremonies held at the grave site, Seiji has been noticeable by his absence.

Downer details the remarkable story of the Tsutsumi dynasty in historical context and with intelligence, zest and wit. Her details are culled from dozens of persons close to the family and the businesses and from abundant journalistic accounts and many books written about the family over the years. Neither Yoshiaki nor Seiji would consent to be interviewed directly, but despite this, Downer has woven a convincing tale that is much more than the extraordinary story of a remarkable man and his feuding siblings. It is a rare view of the high-powered world of Japanese business, of power politics and a painless primer on Japan’s modern history. In short, “The Brothers” is a welcome dose of reality for anyone trying to understand the Japanese as human beings rather than stereotypes.