A former foreign correspondent for Time magazine , Mr. Gibney wrote nearly a dozen books , among them '' Five Gentlemen of Japan : The Portrait of a Nation 's Character '' -LRB- Farrar , Straus & Young , 1953 -RRB- ; '' Japan , the Fragile Superpower '' -LRB- Norton , 1975 -RRB- ; and '' The Pacific Century : America and Asia in a Changing World '' -LRB- Scribner 's , 1992 -RRB- .