Whatever economic trauma besets the rest of Japan, its pop culture never ceases to throw up surprises. The latest is a novel about high school baseball shot through with lessons from Peter Drucker. Yes, that Peter Drucker, author of The Effective Executive; Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices; Managing for the Future and fistfuls of other managerial rip-snorters. The book, titled What if the Female Manager of a High School Baseball Team Read Drucker’s ‘Management’ by Natsumi Iwasaki has sold 2m copies over the past year and is now being turned into a manga comic and anime television series.

On my first visit to Japan a couple of years ago, I was amazed to see how Drucker’s books still dominate the business sections in Tokyo’s bookstores. In the US and Europe, one is hard-pressed to find managers under 45 who have more than a passing acquaintance with Drucker. In Japan his works are holy writ.

There are swaths of Drucker’s encyclopedic oeuvre that no longer resonate. They reek of the hair tonic and smoky rooms of 1950s manufacturing companies. But The Essential Drucker, edited and introduced by the man himself, is still remarkably fresh. The essays, a series of incontrovertible meditations on the art of management, are shot through with humanism. Drucker was never a headbanger and rarely a bore.