The Japanese-language version of "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations," by David Landes, professor emeritus of history and economics at Harvard University, has been published. The translator of the book, Keio University Professor Heizo Takenaka, notes that gaps are widening between winners and losers in global economic competition. Such gaps have always existed. Civilization is often influenced by natural conditions. This explains why Western Europe has played a leading role in modern industrial civilization, starting with the Industrial Revolution, and why Japan, the last major player in that global competition, has fast grown into a major economic power.

Natural conditions, however, can have a positive or a negative influence on the formation of a civilization. Winners are successful because they take advantage of positive forces and check negative ones.

Landes is a firm believer in Western-style progress. He separates winners from losers by determining how non-Western nations have adapted to the Western concept of economic development. China's Ching Dynasty, bound by anachronistic value systems and social structures, became a "sleeping lion" and was left behind during the period of major global change that continued into the early 20th century.