Bending Adversity
Japan and the Art of Survival
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Narrated by:
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Tim Andes Pabon
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By:
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David Pilling
About this listen
In Bending Adversity, Financial Times Asia editor David Pilling presents a fresh vision of Japan, drawing on his own deep experience, as well as observations from a cross section of Japanese citizenry, including novelist Haruki Murakami, former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, industrialists and bankers, activists and artists, teenagers and octogenarians. Through their voices, Pilling captures the dynamism and diversity of contemporary Japan.
Pilling’s exploration begins with the 2011 triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. His deep reporting reveals both Japan’s vulnerabilities and its resilience and pushes him to understand the country’s past through cycles of crisis and reconstruction. Japan’s survivalist mentality has carried it through tremendous hardship, but is also the source of great destruction: It was the nineteenth-century struggle to ward off colonial intent that resulted in Japan’s own imperial endeavor, culminating in the devastation of World War II. Even the postwar economic miracle—the manufacturing and commerce explosion that brought unprecedented economic growth and earned Japan international clout might have been a less pure victory than it seemed.
In Bending Adversity, Pilling questions what was lost in the country’s blind, aborted climb to #1. With the same rigor, he revisits 1990—the year the economic bubble burst, and the beginning of Japan’s “lost decades”—to ask if the turning point might be viewed differently. While financial struggle and national debt are a reality, post-growth Japan has also successfully maintained a stable standard of living and social cohesion. And while life has become less certain, opportunities—in particular for the young and for women—have diversified.
Still, Japan is in many ways a country in recovery, working to find a way forward after the events of 2011 and decades of slow growth. Bending Adversity closes with a reflection on what the 2012 reelection of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and his radical antideflation policy, might mean for Japan and its future. Informed throughout by the insights shared by Pilling’s many interview subjects, Bending Adversity rigorously engages with the social, spiritual, financial, and political life of Japan to create a more nuanced representation of the oft-misunderstood island nation and its people.
©2014 Avid Pilling (P)2014 Gildan Media LLCListeners also enjoyed...
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For Rupert Russell, the Brexit vote was only the latest shock in a decade full of them: the unstoppable war in Syria, huge migrant flows into Europe, beheadings in Iraq, children placed in cages on the U.S. border. In Price Wars, he sets out on a worldwide journey to investigate what caused the wave of chaos that consumed the world in the 2010s. Russell travels to Tunisia, Iraq, Venezuela, Ukraine, East Africa, and Central America and discovers that unrest in all these places was triggered by dramatic and mysterious swings in the price of essential commodities.
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I really wanted to like it
- By Monte Johnston on 04-09-22
By: Rupert Russell
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The Billionaire Raj
- A Journey Through India's New Gilded Age
- By: James Crabtree
- Narrated by: Shridhar Solanki
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In megacities like Mumbai, where half the population live in slums, the extraordinary riches of India’s new dynasties echo the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers of yesterday. James Crabtree’s The Billionaire Raj takes listeners on a personal journey to meet these reclusive billionaires, fugitive tycoons, and shadowy political power brokers. Crabtree dramatizes the battle between crony capitalists and economic reformers, revealing a tense struggle between equality and privilege playing out against a combustible backdrop of aspiration, class, and caste.
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Engaging, authors politics could be reduced
- By Chris on 06-17-23
By: James Crabtree
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Age of Ambition
- Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China
- By: Evan Osnos
- Narrated by: Evan Osnos, George Backman
- Length: 16 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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As the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, Evan Osnos was on the ground in China for years, witness to profound political, economic, and cultural upheaval. In Age of Ambition, he describes the greatest collision taking place in that country: the clash between the rise of the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control.
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Come back when you have a warrant!
- By Neuron on 11-06-15
By: Evan Osnos
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Grand Pursuit
- The Story of Economic Genius
- By: Sylvia Nasar
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd, Anne Twomey
- Length: 20 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In a sweeping narrative, the author of the mega-bestseller A Beautiful Mind takes us on a journey through modern history with the men and women who changed the lives of every single person on the planet. It’s the epic story of the making of modern economics, and of how it rescued mankind from squalor and deprivation by placing its material fate in its own hands rather than in Fate. Nasar’s account begins with Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew observing and publishing the condition of the poor majority in mid nineteenth-century London, the richest and most glittering place in the world.
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A Beautiful Grand Pursuit
- By Joshua Kim on 05-06-12
By: Sylvia Nasar
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Thinking Small
- The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagon Beetle
- By: Andrea Hiott
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 15 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Sometimes achieving big things requires the ability to think small. This simple concept was the driving force that propelled the Volkswagen Beetle to become an avatar of American-style freedom, a household brand, and a global icon. The VW Bug inspired the ad men of Madison Avenue, beguiled Woodstock Nation, and has recently been re-imagined for the hipster generation. And while today it is surely one of the most recognizable cars in the world, few of us know the compelling details of this car’s story.
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book is a history lesson
- By Michael miller on 10-02-12
By: Andrea Hiott
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1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War
- By: Charles Emerson
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 19 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Today, 1913 is inevitably viewed through the lens of 1914: as the last year before a war that would shatter the global economic order and tear Europe apart, undermining its global pre-eminence. Our perspectives narrowed by hindsight, the world of that year is reduced to its most frivolous features last summers in grand aristocratic residences or its most destructive ones: the unresolved rivalries of the great European powers, the fear of revolution, violence in the Balkans.
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Good book ruined by bad read
- By GANESHi on 08-02-13
By: Charles Emerson
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The Italians
- By: John Hooper
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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John Hooper's marvelously entertaining and perceptive new book is ideal for anyone seeking to understand contemporary Italy and the unique character of the Italians. Looking at the facts that lie behind and often belie the stereotypes, his revealing book sheds new light on many aspects of Italian life: football and Freemasonry, sex, symbolism, and the reason Italian has twelve words for a coat hanger yet none for a hangover.
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Mi piace molto!
- By Adeliese Baumann on 12-30-16
By: John Hooper
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The Oligarchs
- Wealth and Power in the New Russia
- By: David Hoffman
- Narrated by: Steve Coulter
- Length: 22 hrs and 50 mins
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A brilliant investigative narrative: How six average Soviet men rose to the pinnacle of Russia's battered economy. David Hoffman, former Moscow bureau chief for
The Washington Post, sheds light onto the hidden lives of Russia's most feared power brokers: the oligarchs. Focusing on six of these ruthless men Hoffman reveals how a few players managed to take over Russia's cash-strapped economy and then divvy it up in loans-for-shares deals.
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Supreme Chronicle of Murky Times
- By ivan on 03-01-14
By: David Hoffman
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Notes on a Foreign Country
- An American Abroad in a Post-American World
- By: Suzy Hansen
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the US-led invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen, who grew up in an insular conservative town in New Jersey, was enjoying early success as a journalist for a high-profile New York newspaper. Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul.
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A MUST-READ for all Truth-Seeking American wh
- By Parveen Mehdi-Newton on 12-08-17
By: Suzy Hansen
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New World Coming
- The 1920s and the Making of Modern America
- By: Nathan Miller
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 18 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Jazz. Bootleggers. Flappers. Talkies. Model T Fords. Lindbergh's history-making flight over the Atlantic. The 1920s was also the decade of the hard-won vote for women, racial injustice, censorship, social conflict, and the birth of organized crime.
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My High School History Class Never Told
- By Charles Stembridge on 06-29-04
By: Nathan Miller
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The Future Is History
- How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
- By: Masha Gessen
- Narrated by: Masha Gessen
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own - as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings.
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The author is an international treasure
- By ThreeGems on 10-16-17
By: Masha Gessen
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Three Tigers, One Mountain
- A Journey Through the Bitter History and Current Conflicts of China, Korea, and Japan
- By: Michael Booth
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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There is an ancient Chinese proverb that states, "Two tigers cannot share the same mountain." However, in East Asia, there are three tigers on that mountain: China, Japan, and Korea, and they have a long history of turmoil and tension with each other. In his latest entertaining and thought-provoking narrative travelogue, Michael Booth sets out to discover how deep, really, the enmity is between these three "tiger" nations and what prevents them from making peace.
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Not much new here if you are already familiar
- By Neil Richert on 07-13-20
By: Michael Booth
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What listeners say about Bending Adversity
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Stephanie M Kelley
- 07-08-18
Great content, uncomfortable narration
The book itself was very interesting. I'd been meaning to pick it up for a while but had been putting it off, and I'm glad I finally got to it. There were some parts that seemed unnecessarily in-depth (for instance, some of the economic aspects dragged) and other parts that were repetitive (he would reintroduce a subject without acknowledging it as such, which made me sometimes feel like "didn't I already listen to this part?" only to realize it was a new section) but aside from that the book was filled with very interesting, informative content. It was nice to have a book that was about the in-depth political and societal aspects of Japan, unlike the pop-culture which is usually so prevalent. I feel like I have a much stronger understanding of Japan's political and economic culture after listening to this.
However, as others have stated, the narrator was a somewhat uncomfortable experience at times. As someone who is studying Japan, it was irritating to hear the important political names pronounced in a way that was almost beyond understanding--which prevented me from being able to link my previous understanding of Japanese politicians with certain sections of the book. Almost all the Japanese words were terribly mispronounced (and even some of the English words). I would recommend finding readers at least somewhat coached in subject language of the books they're reading. It can make for a much more pleasant, less cringe-inducing experience for those truly interested in the material.
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- NNK
- 05-31-16
Great story, but the narrator was distracting
The narrator had some serious problems
pronouncing Japanese words (e.g., gyoza, mochi). Also, several other words were pronounced strangely or wrong (draught beer, cum (in the Latin sense)). This is the first time I've even noticed the narrator.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Kristi Anderson
- 02-12-15
Great Japan info
This book was well written and informative about non pop culture Japan and the issues it's facing. It was a fairly objective view of history, crisis and current issues.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Julian Honeycutt
- 06-28-19
Story mediocre/ narrator painfully bad
The story was interesting. It wasn’t a cliffhanger and it’d be best if you had a very keen interest in and knowledge of Japan before reading the book. I would suggest reading. The narrator- wow -. I think someone with zero understanding of Japanese might not be the best person to narrate a book about Japan. The pronunciation was distractingly bad, to the point I was confused. Multiple times he would pronounce the same word different ways I thought he was talking about different things.
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- Kallan Resnick
- 10-24-14
Good book, but terribly read
What did you love best about Bending Adversity?
The author has a detailed understanding of the nuances of modern day Japan.
How could the performance have been better?
The performance was awful. The reader tried to add accents to every Japanese word but sounded ridiculous throughout. Sorry for being so direct, but his performance made me cringe every time I listened to the book, even though I found the content very interesting.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Mike M. Javanmard
- 06-14-14
The Reader
Good writing and matched my experiences of Japan. However, I did not care for the reader. If I was not stuck on a plane I would not have finished listening to it.
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1 person found this helpful
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- pilot
- 12-15-14
Good Description of Japan Today
In the past couple of years my work has involved some travel to Japan. I've found a general scarcity of books on present day Japan-- most titles are about War World II. I found this book highly informative and it made me re-think many preconceptions I had about Japan. This is the best non-fiction I've found on present day Japan.
The narrator was okay. At the beginning I found his voice monotonous, but I did become used to it and finished the book.
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Overall
- Tomek S
- 02-13-16
Chapter 13 starts from the middle...
Very good book. Just wondering what I've missed in the part that was cut off. I hope not too much.
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