I have never been to Japan, but I know a lot about Japan.  James Clavell’s classic novel Shogun, gave me my first insight into the culture and norms of the Japanese.  My never ending fascination with this part of the Orient assumed a new dimension and colouration while schooling at Oxford in the English West Midlands in the late seventies. I was accommodated in a hostel which housed a motley crowd of boisterous, young students from all over the world.  My next door neighbour was a bright-eyed Japanese of my age, named Tokushi Hirohito.  We were to become very close friends, and when his parents came on a visit from Japan, it seemed only natural that I be invited to spend the weekend at the Hirohito’s town house in London’s smart West End.  My encounter with the elder Hirohito, a wealthy Industrialist in his sixties at his summer residence, will to this day, be one of my most memorable.  That the Japanese are a fastidiously courteous race is a legendary fact.  What fascinated me more was their incredible resilience and shock-absorbing capacity in the face of adversity, even at its extreme.  At dinner one evening, I precociously asked Mr. Hirohito to tell me the source of his peoples’ well-known ability to remain quiet, composed and seemingly unruffled in the midst of difficulty.  This was what he said.