TIME rarely devotes an entire issue to a single subject; in the past 13 years, only five topics have been so treated: blacks in America (1970), the American woman (1972), President Nixon's resignation (1974), the South (1976) and the Soviet Union (1980). Early this year, the magazine's editors decided that Japan, with its constantly increasing impact on international affairs, would be an appropriate topic for such an issue. Japan has moved into the forefront of the news as its booming economy has affected everything from the shopping habits to the trade deficits of the entire Western world. Japan's politics, arts, technology, mores, business practices--indeed, its way of life--have become the subject of intense curiosity.

Yet this curiosity has proved strangely difficult to satisfy.

While Japan is by no means a closed society like the Soviet Union, which strictly limits access by foreign journalists to its citizens, it is, in the words of Managing Editor Ray Cave, "veiled in a different fashion, psychologically and linguistically." No matter how much time and effort Western journalists spend trying to understand specific aspects of Japan, they are rarely confident that the subject has been fully grasped. TIME'S editors were convinced that readers shared their own interest in Japan, and their own desire to view the nation in broad perspective.

Work on the special issue began in March under the editorial supervision of Senior Writer Roger Rosenblatt. Tokyo Bureau Chief Edwin Reingold, Correspondent S. Chang and Reporters Alan Tansman, Thomas Levenson and Yuki Ishikawa were joined by Hong Kong Bureau Chief Sandra Burton. They conducted hundreds of interviews that ranged across Japanese society: Reingold met with Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone in his neobaroque Official Residence in Tokyo; Chang visited shabby neighborhood bars to talk with laborers who were not part of their country's "corporation families." The Tokyo task force was augmented by writers working in special areas: Art Critic Robert Hughes, Design Critic Wolf Von Eckardt, Music Critic Michael Walsh and Senior Writers Paul Gray and Lance Morrow. Picture Editor Arnold Drapkin went to Japan to direct the activities of Bureau Photo Editor Shoichi Imai and the assignments of Photographers Neil Leifer and Ted Thai.

In New York, the editors, with the help of Design Consultant Tom Bentkowski, made format changes to handle the issue's unusual demands. Added to the magazine's regular departments were five new sections: History, Culture, Psychology, Language and Travel, the latter written especially for TIME by William Least Heat Moon, author of the bestselling U.S. travelogue Blue Highways. A New York City printing firm provided the characters symbolizing each of TIME'S sections (the kanji above: Japan).

Reporter-Researcher Val Castronovo coordinated the efforts of the large research staff. Reporter-Researcher Rosemary Byrnes gathered and assessed material for the cover story. The editors were also substantively aided by two special consultants: Robert Christopher, former TIME senior editor and author of The Japanese Mind (1983), and Edwin Reischauer, U.S. Ambassador to Japan from 1961 to 1966 and a noted Asia scholar who wrote The Japanese (1977).

The resulting special issue is the largest in TIME'S history. It constitutes an incisive, in-depth portrait of Japan today, that vigorous, fascinating nation poised at a hazardous crossroad between East and West. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.