A newspaperman, an ex-Navy vice-admiral, a steel worker, a farmer, and the 124th Emperor of Japan himself—these are the fascinating heroes of Gibney's brilliant book about modern Japan. Strongly individual, every one of them, the five yet share the common inheritance of Japan's precocious but unstable past.

Through their lives and attitudes, Gibney gives us an invaluable analysis of this new sovereign nation so suddenly thrown into the world's power conflicts. He helps us understand the historical and social forces which make Japan what she is today—the old contracts and loyalties from which each of the Five Gentlemen is struggling to break away from his country. Their courageous efforts to weld a new Japan from the remains of the old society, and to come to terms with the present, are as exciting as it is important.