Japan’s Scottish Option
Was there a racist assumption that Japan was inherently more aggressive than the countries that produced the Nazis and Mussolini? Or was it a question of geopolitical strategy?
The Dark Side of Womenomics
The genetic upper class would be tall, intelligent and creative, while the underclass would consist of tubby, dim-witted goblins.
Abe’s Moment of Truth
If Mr. Abe offered citizens a say in their own governance, it would be the first time since Japan’s mythical first emperor came ashore in 660 B.C.
Terayama’s Mama
Two of Shuji Terayama’s maternally-themed tanka poems from the early 1960s.
Tokyo Dick
“Dick didn’t do macroeconomics. He didn’t do Japan. He didn’t do Limeys and he didn’t do listening. Dick just did Dick”
What the World Cup Says about the World
India and China are not rising superpowers. On Planet Football, they hardly exist at all. Instead of BRICs, we have the BICCs: Belgium, Ivory Coast, Chile and Columbia.
Whatever Happened to the Beijing Consensus?
Countries do not always act in their own best interests, as historian Barbara Tuchman established in “The March of Folly”
One Cheer For Thai Democracy
This is Thailand’s umpteenth coup in the modern period so the generals know the routine well by now.
Shuji Terayama TV Commercial
We’ll be talking about Terayama at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation in London on May 30th
Capitalism Heads East
The threat of bankruptcy swept away politically-driven vanity projects.Nothing was too big to fail, not even the ruling family of Indonesia.