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Published in Nikkei Asia on 15/3/2024
I’m sitting in the front row, almost close enough to touch Jimmy Page’s sky blue jacket. Page, leader of the legendary rock band Led Zeppelin, is in the midst of a lengthy number called “Dazed and Confused,” which requires him to run a violin bow across the strings of his electric guitar, thereby producing a series of mournful and disturbing sounds.
Published in Japan Forward February 23 2024
If the Bank of Japan were a hedge fund, it would be celebrating a bumper performance, now that its huge treasure trove of Japanese equities has soared in value. Instead, there are concerns about how it can ever sell them. Fortunately, there is a solution that would cause minimal market disturbance while turbo-charging Japan’s new equity culture.
Published in Japan Forward January 3rd 2024
Enter the Dragon, a symbol of dynamism, wisdom and strength. Let’s hope it lives up to its billing.
In 2023 normality resumed, or so it seemed. People stopped talking about Covid. No prime minister was assassinated. Inflation fell to reasonable levels in many developed countries.
Published in Japan Forward 15/11/2023
According to many respected economists, it is just a matter of time before Asia’s largest, strongest economy overtakes the United States as the world’s number one economic power.
Published by Japan Forward 30/11/2023
The year is 1947 and Godzilla is on the rampage in Tokyo, chewing up train carriages like candy bars. Japan is controlled by the American Occupation forces, but General MacArthur refuses to intervene for fear of inciting a military showdown with the Soviet Union.
Published in Nikkei Asia 12/11/2023
Olga V. Solovieva’s “The Russian Kurosawa” and David A. Conrad’s “Akira Kurosawa and Modern Japan” link both famous and less well-known movies to contemporary events in Japan and the world that may have influenced them.
Published in Nikkei Asia August 26th
This year marks both the 60th anniversary of the death of the great Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu and the 120th anniversary of his birth. I was lucky enough to attend one of several celebratory events — a showing of two short silent films that he made in the late 1920s.
Published in Japan Forward 14/09/2023
The midday sun was hammering down when we joined the 30,000-strong crowd in Toulouse, France’s capital city of rugby.
Japan’s team, nicknamed “the Brave Blossoms”, were starting their 2023 World Cup campaign with a match against Chile, newcomers to the event.
Published in Japan Forward 14th August 2023
An atom bomb has just been dropped on the city of Hiroshima. In a lecture room in Los Alamos, home of the Manhattan Project which created this new weapon, there is wild excitement. Project Director J. Robert Oppenheimer stands before the crowd and pronounces it a great day for America.
Published in Nikkei Asia July 6th 2023
Ian Buruma has the rare skill of bringing together seemingly disparate characters and events in a way that sheds startling new light on well-worn themes.