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Continuous Improvement: Quality Control Circles in Japanese Industry . By Paul Lillrank and Noriaki Kano. Michigan Papers in Japanese Studies 19. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies, 1989, xvi, 294 pp. $13.95.

of 1918, and makes an important contribution to our understanding of both what happened and what didn't happen during the months of turmoil that accompanied the events genetically described by the term riot. This work draws our attention to the myopia that has prevented Japanese scholars from providing a non-ideological interpretation for the "Rice Riot" events, and, also, guides us to a more sophisticated view of the place they may have in the wider development of Taisho/Showa politics. Of particular importance is Lewis's suggestion that the rural spark for the riots was in reality a more traditional form of protest, even though the urban versions implied an alienation more common to many modern urban settings. The distinctive labor/management conflicts in the mines of Kyushu also represent a difference that makes him uncomfortable with any effort to link them with the Toyama and Nagoya unrest. The "Rice Riots" were more complex in their implications and results than one might at first suspect, and the author has done well in exploring the possibilities. In respect to the rural origins of the protests in Toyama, it would be interesting to explore the impact the riots had on the thinking of young military officers during the twenties and thirties, as Toyama was a producer of service personnel, some with an aggressive and radical turn of politics. The trauma of urban unrest clearly had an impact on the Taisho bureaucracy and gerontocracy, as it led almost inevitably to the Peace Preservation Law of 1925 and to an increase in the personnel and structures required to keep a rapidly shifting population under some greater form of social control. The impact of the riots and the circumstances surrounding them on rural-urban migration would also be an interesting follow-up study. The author's observations that the people involved in the unrest did not have much respect for the police in many of the confrontations suggests that the forces of law and order had lost track of their role in the Japanese social compact at that point, and the defensive reactions of the authorities may be understood in this context. The police themselves, especially those on the local level, understood what was happening a lot better than their government leadership, which generally existed at a point far removed from the realities faced by local populations.