Thanks to everyone who posted tributes to my father. I thought I might honor him with a not-too-serious thread on some of his major works, from the admittedly warped perspective of one of his offspring. 1/13

Let’s start with Japan’s New Middle Class 1963, hands-down my favorite. I am biased, of course, since my parents conducted the research together, and I know many in the cast of characters.

My parents immersed themselves in the lives of 6 families in a Tokyo suburb. The book is a testament to the payoff from intensive ethnographic research. It offers the reader a vivid portrait of everyday life in 1950s Japan. 3/13

Canton Under Communism 1969, the only one I had to read in college. That ruined it for me. But it was pretty impressive that he could write such a rich book about a country he had never been to. He interviewed refugees from the mainland in Hong Kong.

Japan as Number One 1979, Japan's all-time top-selling non-fiction work by a non-Japanese author – I think. Some claimed it was not truly a work of scholarship, or it did not treat Japan’s strengths and weaknesses evenly. But that was the point.