How did one of the world’s greatest and most ancient civilizations reach the state of economic, cultural and environmental decline that defines it today? Why, through decades of spectacular economic progress, did nobody comment on the terrifying price paid by ordinary Japanese? Now economically devastated, shunned by foreign tourists and regularly voted by visiting businessmen as one of the world’s least appetizing destinations, Japan must now wake up to the ‘state-sponsored vandalism’ that has crushed families into tiny flats, bulldozed and cemented over the banks of most of the country’s rivers and its historic towns.