Book excerpt: An academic who has lived and taught in Japan, Bohnaker says that Japan is a country in which a highly "formulaic" and ritualized culture overlays an often desperate, prejudiced, and unhappy reality: Japanese sarari-men (white collar workers) are married to the work place and seek release in after-work bouts of drunkenness; women occupy a decidedly unequal place in society; children are driven (sometimes to suicide) by a brutal educational system; et cetera While there is considerable truth in much of what Bohnaker says, he doesn't discuss the concomitant weaknesses of Western culture or the Japanese philosophic and aesthetic values that endure outside the realm of mass culture.