China’s ships had immediately retreated from the Senkakus at the orders of their confused government. Denials had been quickly and emphatically delivered, but the world was skeptical. The Chinese people, weaned on a diet of violent anti-Japanese rhetoric, had once again taken to the streets, this time with a fervor that the Communist Party was proving unable to control.

Despite their despotic tendencies, the truth was that the members of the politburo ruled their country at the pleasure of the billion people surrounding them. And those people’s pleasure was blood.

The pilot arced the plane to the west and Takahashi braced himself as they closed in on the massive rescue effort. After a few moments he could see individual divers working from rafts and the men standing at attention on the deck of the Isi, watching over the rows of flag-draped bodies.

He had spent most of his adult life studying Japan and the complex nature of its people. How could a small island in the Pacific have taken on the world? Why were Japanese children consistently slotted at the very top of academic achievement? How had his people acquired their unparalleled levels of courage and discipline?

At first he had focused on history and culture, but it hadn’t taken him long to realize that there were no satisfying answers there. Japan had been a relatively primitive and inward-looking feudal state, and in some ways that philosophy had persisted well into the nineteenth century. When his country finally decided to modernize, though, it had done so at a pace that the rest of the world could only marvel at. It was solely the failure of Japan’s nuclear weapons program that had kept the tiny island from taking control of Asia.

Even after its defeat at the hands of America, Japan had quickly risen to become the leader of technological innovation and the second-largest economy in the world—relegated to that subordinate position only by their relatively small population and lack of natural resources.

How had all this been possible?

The answer was finally revealed by the fledgling science of genetics. Isolated from their neighbors, the Japanese had not only changed in physical appearance, but had evolved the superior intelligence, discipline, and loyalty that elevated them above the other races. In a very real sense, they were born to rule.

“General,” the pilot said, twisting in his seat and pulling one of his earphones off. “You have a call from the prime minister.”

Takahashi nodded and pointed through the windscreen at the bodies on the Isi’s flight deck. “Get a picture of that.”

It would be a powerful image for his people to rally around. Of course, it wouldn’t be difficult to determine who had leaked the photo to the press, but what could the government do? Every day he got stronger and the Japanese people came to see their politicians for the useless theater troupe they were.