Wind From the East : THE PACIFIC CENTURY: America and Asia in a Changing World, <i> By Frank Gibney (Scribner’s / A Robert Stewart Book: $40; 596 pp.)</i>

Frank Gibney may well be the best interpreter of Japan to a wide public now writing in America, perhaps the entire world. His previous books depicting that key country of the Orient--warts, beauty spots, aberrations and all--are innovative, indeed trail-blazing, the work of a first-class journalist and scholar presented in prose at once nimble and eloquent.

In “The Pacific Century,” however, Gibney paints on a much larger canvas: all East Asia from Korea to Indonesia, the region whose peoples are, quite simply, the most dynamic part of mankind. He is well suited to depict a continent of entrepreneurs who produce more than half the goods of the world; he has been almost as much entrepreneur and businessman as author and journalist during his hectic career. Knowing, as few scholars or journalists do, what it means to make major decisions in the real world, he attacks his new sphere with gusto and verve, flinching from neither its complexities nor its magnitude.

I am, however, puzzled by one question: Just what kind of a book does “The Pacific Century” mean to be?

It is manifestly not history or sociology. It is not a personal account, though it is enlivened by the author’s considerable experience in Asia. It is not a textbook, since a companion textbook by another author is published in conjunction. It is not a coffee-table book--most definitely not in its sophistication and insight--although it is outsized and, as the publisher says, “lavishly illustrated.”

It apparently belongs to a new genre: the television book. Although Gibney tells us that it was written separately, “The Pacific Century” grew with the forthcoming television series of the same name.

The consequent thematic approach makes the book choppy and, in places, hard to follow. The historical sequence is, perhaps of necessity, jumbled. Some major events are described before the events that led to them, and extended references to certain other events are scattered confusingly throughout the text. The writing style often lacks Gibney’s normal polish.

Gibney is, in a sense, a victim of his own great knowledge of Japan. The sections devoted to that country are, as one expects, superb. But the other sections simply do not measure up and often suffer from a tendency to see the rest of Asia through Japanese spectacles.

The sections on Korea, Japan’s closest neighbor and perennial victim, are excellent. The sections on China, which is beyond question the most important nation of East Asia historically and culturally, are good, especially in their incisive analysis, although a parade of factual errors is disturbing.

Mao Zedong, for instance, was present at the inaugural congress of the Chinese Communist Party, although implicitly absent in this account; the two then-leaders Gibney places at that meeting were not present. Qianlong was an emperor of the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty, not the Ming, a matter of several centuries. Shaoxing is a city of south China, not north China. Dazhai and Daqing are places where, the communists claimed, exemplary economic deeds were done, not individuals who did exemplary deeds.

While these may seem like quibbles, they are in fact all-important details that will deceive many readers in a work that will almost assuredly become a standard. It was, for example, historically significant that the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) moved the capital from Nanjing in central China north to Beijing, which it called the northern capital. That move was a reassertion of Chinese sovereignty over all China after a period of Mongol rule. But Gibney, in an apparently learned footnote, has the Ming moving the other way around, from Beijing to Nanjing.

Perhaps because his canvas is so wide, Gibney tends to race over the rest of Asia, as if fulfilling a slightly unwelcome assignment expeditiously. He is, of course, right in judging Japan and China worthy of the greatest attention, but the rest of the region, which is rapidly becoming a de facto trading bloc, is worthy of greater attention.

“The Pacific Century” notes with intelligent appreciation the American contribution toward making Asian government and society more responsive to popular needs, particularly in Japan and the Philippines. Unfortunately, what many Asians consider “democracy” departs considerably from the American model. In Japan and Korea, single-portmanteau parties could hold power indefinitely, just as GOLKAR, a synthesized mass movement, could in Indonesia even after the passing of President Suharto. Moreover, as Gibney notes, the greatest economic progress in East Asia has been made under authoritarian direction. And in China, of course, they don’t even talk about democracy.

Middle-Asians’ efforts to win a greater say in how they are ruled will not lead to American-style democracy, nor should they necessarily. As some learned in Vietnam, what is good for Americans is not always good for Asians.

Besides, we are now coming to the end of major American influence in Asia, in part because of declining American interest in the area. Gibney would disagree with that conclusion, at least implicitly, and he argues eloquently for much greater American economic and cultural involvement--combined, oddly for the immediate future, with military disengagement.

It may sound odd to talk of the approaching end of major American influence and a lack of American interest in Asia at a time when Americans are vitally interested in Japan (albeit largely as competitor and bugbear) and when American military might--measured by the size of the bang, rather than the number of personnel--has never been greater in Asia.

Moreover, as Gibney points out, the number of Asian students in American universities (160,000) is not only the highest ever but also amounts by far to the greatest number of Asians studying in any foreign country. There is also the overwhelming, overweening, inescapable prevalence of American popular culture in movies, videos, music and gossip.

Most Asians, in fact, would like the American military to remain--in a slightly different role. Instead of holding the line against perceived communist expansion, they want American forces to keep the balance of power, blocking potential Chinese and Japanese military threats as well as local rivalries.

But Asians are no longer eager for Americans to play a major economic role. While catering to the American consumer, whose insatiable appetite made the Asian economic miracle, they are slowly edging Americans out of Asia. Yes, American investment and trade are increasing, but Japan, Taiwan and South Korea are building, investing and selling much more than America is in China and Southeast Asia.

Furthermore, Americans seem to have lost their zest for economic pioneering just when the economies of East Asia have become the fastest-growing and most innovative on the globe. In marked contrast to moribund Europe and the United States, scores of yellow construction cranes bob over every important Asian city from Seoul to Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur.

We can only hope that books like “The Pacific Century” will help reverse the trend.