What Can Abe Teach Europe?

This goes a long way to explaining the remarkable fall in the suicide rate over the past several years, which has reversed nearly all of the sharp increase of the late 1990s.

The Sumo Champ in the Bath

Japanese bureaucracies, like others elsewhere, react to the prospect of transparency like a vampire reacts to the coming of daylight.

The Oil Factor: Apocalypse Postponed

High commodity prices were a mechanism for enriching plutocrats, oligarchs and sovereign wealth funds – effectively turning global labour income into capital which was then recycled into securities, prime real estate and art…

Abe Gambles on Growth

In this age of womenomics and passive “herbivore” males, is there any room for the strong silent type prepared to risk everything?

Kuroda Unchained

The Topix Index is at its cheapest since Ali decked Foreman on a sticky October night in Zaire all those years ago.

High Noon for Haruhiko Kuroda

Central bankers need the intellectual courage to face down hostile forces, just as Gary Cooper’s sheriff took on the gunslingers in Fred Zinnemann’s 1952 film.