I couldn’t help but plow through Richard Katz’s latest book, The Contest for Japan’s Economic Future.

For Japanophiles and generally anyone curious about business in Japan, or the dynamics of burgeoning innovation ecosystems globally, I highly recommend this book, and not just because Katz cites me in his hopeful conclusion.

Vacillating between feeling both tepid skepticism and hopeful optimism, I found myself frequently nodding alone with Katz’s insightful analysis in The Contest.

Several of his anecdotes resonated with me. For example, his recounting of one of the academics he had interviewed struck a particularly familiar chord:

“When I spoke of Raksul [a successful Japanese startup] to an American professor at a Japanese business school, she reacted, ‘It seems a bit sad that, in a country that has produced giants like Honda Soichiro, (Founder of Honda Motors), Matsushita Konosuke (Founder of Panasonic), this generation is being symbolized by someone who has come up with an Uber for delivering flowers.'”

The remark from this professor betrays an embarrassing misunderstanding of innovation. It reminds me of the time a decade ago when a former French minister drew jeers from the audience at the country’s largest tech conference for proclaiming that Uber did not innovate anything.

Although peppered with stories from critics and cheerleaders alike, the book is primarily a data-driven assessment with a message.

Perhaps the best encapsulation of the message that Katz appears to be sending to the Japanese government with this book is the following:

“Japan’s tragedy is that the country need not change that much in order to set recovery into motion. The payoff from some of the tax incentives proposed here would be very impactful while causing little disruption. In too many cases, even obvious reforms are blocked by ideological blinders and inertia, even when they do no harm to any vested interests. In fact, Japan’s problems are, in many ways, much easier to solve than some of the problems troubling, for example, the United States, with its bitter partisan animosity, threats to democracy, the existence of a large underclass, and the poor educational achievement of large parts of the population. So many of the initial measures I’ve suggested [for Japan] could easily be adopted and implemented if the political will were there. Seeing greater-than-expected economic payoff and less-than-feared social pain from these measures would make it easier to take more difficult steps.”

From the perspective of an active investor in Japan right now, I find Katz’s conclusion sober yet promising. Enjoy the book.