Peter Tasker — Feed Items
Primary tabs
Published in Japan Forward 3/3/2021
In the event of an earthquake, you’re supposed to shelter under a table. That’s the official advice, anyway. In the early afternoon of March 11th 2011, when the walls of my dwelling started groaning and shuddering like a creature in pain, primitive instinct took over. Before I knew it, I was outside on the street.
Published in Nikkei Asia 17/2/2021
The fate of the 2021 Olympics Games in Tokyo may still be hanging in the balance, but one indirectly related event is already in progress. That is the Tomorrow’s Joe exhibition which I recently viewed at the Bungakukan (“Hall of Literature”) in the city’s Setagaya Ward.
Published in Japan Forward 17/2/ 2021
So it’s finally happened. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index of stock prices has topped the 30,000 level for the first time in 30 years. The most appropriate way to celebrate this event would be by opening a bottle of 30-year old Hibiki whiskey. But that is no easy matter. That particular product of Japanese drinks giant Suntory is extremely hard to find in liquor stores. In the UK, it sells for over £4,000 a bottle.
Published in Newsweek Japan February 1st 2021
The Covid crisis drags on, spreading gloom and despair everywhere, yet stock markets are on fire. Since markets bottomed out in March 2020, the Nikkei 225 and America’s S&P Index have both risen by over 70%, while the tech-stuffed NASDAQ Index has doubled.
Published in Nikkei Asia 15/1/2021
“Over 80% of the world’s people have never been in an airplane. ‘Flight shaming’ may be a social mode in Sweden, population 10 million, but China, population 1.5 billion, is building eight new airports a year.”
Published in Japan Forward 20/1/2021
The storming of the Capitol building by a mob of Trump supporters on January 6th has unleashed a cascade of dodgy comparisons.
Published in Japan Forward 2/1/2021
This time last year I wrote in Japan Forward about the concept of “Lenin weeks”.
I was referring to Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin’s dictum that “there are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.”
Published in Nikkei Asia 18/12/2020
If the Bank of Japan were a hedge fund, it would be congratulating itself on a blow-out year, and getting ready to pay out generous bonuses.
Published in Japan Forward 8/12/2020
Which is the best place to be in the coronavirus era? Having spent a significant amount of time this year in each of France, Belgium, Japan and the U.K., I have my own ideas about that. But let’s not rely on one individual’s necessarily subjective and partial impressions.
Published in Nikkei Asia 23/11/2020
Can you imagine best-selling novelist Haruki Murakami leading a coup attempt against Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga? Or Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan taking a top general hostage in a British army base and inciting a rebellion against Boris Johnson’s government? Or any of the legions of writers and artists who regularly hammered President Donald Trump on social media choosing to die for their cause?