Japan

Thursday

Merryn Somerset-Webb

Investment special: How Shinzo Abe has revived Japan

Thank goodness for Shinzo Abe. Back in 2007, I wrote here that ‘over the next two to five years Japan will turn out to be one of the best investments UK-based investors can make’. By the middle of 2012, nearly five years on, that wasn’t looking like much of a prediction. Then prime minister Abe appeared on the scene. Since his election in November the yen has fallen 20 per cent against the dollar and the Japanese stock market has risen not far off 50 per cent. Phew. So what’s so great about Mr Abe? The short answer is that he has promised to do something about the Japanese economy

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

Europe’s cap on bankers’ pay is merely a harbinger of the Great Persecution to come

‘Possibly the most deluded measure to come from Europe since Diocletian tried to fix the price of groceries across the Roman Empire,’ was Boris Johnson’s assessment of the proposal to cap bankers’ bonuses at 100 per cent of base salary, or 200 per cent with shareholders’ approval. This blunt exercise in market interference was tabled by a committee of MEPs led by a British Lib Dem, Sharon Bowles (perhaps in revenge for the fact that she didn’t win the Bank of England governorship, for which she applied) as a condition of agreeing a new set of bank capital reforms. With the support of all member states other than the one

Thursday

Griff Rhys Jones

Griff Rhys Jones: Burma, My Father and the Forgotten Army

Burma, My Father and the Forgotten Army, with Griff Rhys Jones, is on BBC2 at 9pm on Sunday, 7th July. I have spent a week with old, old men, interviewing veterans who served with the West African regiments in Burma in the 1940s. It’s for a television programme about my father’s war. The young men who were shipped off to the Far East are nonagenarians now and, black or white, universally charming and calm: unhurried, unflappable and brimming with patient good humour. At first, I thought that that’s what must happen as you approach your own centenary. But then I realised it might be the other way round. Perhaps this

Thursday

Emily Rhodes

China bans Haruki Murakami’s ‘1Q84’: George Orwell would have seen the irony

Books – or lack thereof – are the latest manifestation of anti-Japanese sentiment in China. The escalating dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands has provoked some Beijing bookshops to remove Japanese books from their shelves. The most prominent book to be made to disappear is Haruki Murakami’s recent novel 1Q84, a critically acclaimed worldwide bestseller. Rather ironically, given the circumstances, the title echoes Orwell’s 1984 – in Japanese, ‘Q’ and ‘9’ are homonyms. Orwell has an uncanny knack of turning up at the choicest moments. Remember the glitch in July 2009 when Amazon deleted 1984 from everyone’s Kindles? People were startled by the realisation that Amazon could remove a book from

Wednesday

Humphrey Hawksley

Hot War in the South China Sea?

Like the deserts of the Middle East, the barren islands of the South China Sea now loom as a new theatre of war.  Asian countries, indeed America, too, are at odds over how to deal with this power-play by a rising China — if that’s what it is; or scramble for maritime minerals; or as recently witnessed in Chinese cities a resurgence of nationalism and loathing of Japan. The South China Sea brings in China, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, little Brunei and unrecognized Taiwan. They represent the glittering success story of the developing world, the Tiger economies, the shared goal of wealth and education, the peaceful transitions to democracy

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s sub-prime thinking

You’d think the American sub-prime crisis would have taught politicians the world over not to try to rig the housing market. But no, David Cameron is back on it today — about how to ‘unblock’ the system so the debt geyser starts to gush again. ‘The problem today is that you have lenders who aren’t lending, so builders can’t build and buyers can’t buy,’ says the Prime Minister. ‘It needs the government to step in, and help unblock the market.’ The idea that lenders may not lend because they feel the housing market may fall, and people may be unable to repay, is instantly dismissed. He speaks as if debt

Clarissa Tan

China steps into the breach

Singapore China has lost little time pledging rescue help and aid to Japan, even though it is burying its own dead from the earthquake that shook Yunnan on Thursday. Beijing is keenly aware the world is watching it like never before – so its leaders are keen to make all the right noises. But dig deeper, and the reaction is more ambivalent, especially amongst ordinary Chinese, many of whom seem to have mixed feelings about Japan’s disaster. On sites such as Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, some microbloggers have been snide – and some downright sadistic. (The Wall St Journal blog translates some here). It’s a reminder that Sino-Japanese

Saturday

Jonathan Mirsky

Chaps v. Japs

Does anyone do derring-do anymore? Here’s the real thing. On Christmas Day 1941, despite Churchill’s call to fight to the last man, Hong Kong fell to the Japanese, the first British possession to surrender since the American War of Independence. Within a few hours, Chiang Kai-shek’s main official in the colony, the one-legged Admiral Chan Chak, together with three of his staff, several senior British officials and a few others, fled the colony under heavy Japanese fire and managed to reach a little flotilla of motor torpedo boats manned by 50 British sailors. Thus began a journey by boat, foot, truck and train across China, with most of the party

Thursday

Daniel Korski

Apparently, Britain is less stable than a country in danger of collapse

If there is one global index it is best not to be on, it is the Fund for Peace’s annual Failed States Index. It ranks 177 countries using 12 social, economic, and political indicators of pressure on the state. This year, the FSI ranked Somalia as number one for the fourth consecutive year, citing widespread lawlessness, ineffective government, terrorism, conflict, crime, and pirate attacks against commercial vessels as reasons for the country’s billing. Finland, on the other hand, has displaced Norway at the bottom of the index. “Slight fluctuations in demographic and economic indicators, though minimal, lowered Norway’s scores, allowing Finland, with its continued stability, to slip in front of

Sunday

Clarissa Tan

The cost to a nation

When the West looks at Japan, it’s strange that so much attention falls on the Japanese nuclear plants when the tsunami – water, mud and debris – was by far the greater killer. The picture of the tsunami damage is becoming clearer all the time. Here, from my vantage point of Singapore, is the latest summary: Deaths: 11,938 people are dead. More than 7,000 of them died in Miyagi prefecture, over 3,000 in Iwate and 1,000 in Fukushima. 15,478 people are missing. The death toll rises daily. Searches are on for orphans. Displacement: 164,200 people have been evacuated due to the tsunami and live in makeshift shelters. Only one-third of

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Nuclear hysteria

The above Japanese video – explaining the nuclear accident to children — makes a lot more sense than many of the hysterical reports we have been reading in the last few days. The figures are not out yet, but it’s likely that tens of thousands were killed by the tsunami. Yet the newspapers were all focused on the nuclear meltdown — which injured 15 people. The irony is that, when a tsunami strikes, the local nuclear power station is pretty much the safest place to be. This is the argument advanced in the leading article for the current issue of The Spectator (subscribers, click here; non-subscribers please join us for

Friday

Jonathan Jones

From the archives: fleeing nuclear catastrophe

As the severity of the Fukushima nuclear disaster is upgraded and thousands of people are evacuated from Japan, here’s Samuel Phipps’ account of his own evacuation from Minsk following the 1986 Chernobyl explosion. A Sudden Evacuee, Samuel Phipps, The Spectator 10 May 1986 ‘You’ll be national heroes when you get back to England,’ said one of our Russian friends in Minsk, as we sat outside the hostel, waiting in the evening sunshine for our fates to be determined. Sure enough, pictures on Friday lunchtime television showed a relieved mother pouring champagne over her relieved Sloane Ranger daughter at Heathrow. In the studio afterwards, the girl somehow got the conversation around

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

More woe for the FCO

The Japanese tsunami is exposing the shortcomings of the Foreign Office. Embarrassingly, a team of British rescuers has been thwarted because the British embassay in Tokyo failed to process the right paperwork – so they are now flying back home. The words of Willie McMartin, head of the Grangemouth-based outfit, speak best for themselves: ‘The team has had excellent help from the Japanese embassy in London and the authorities in Tokyo but it broke down when they couldn’t get the relevant paperwork from the British embassy in Tokyo. This was the 32nd world disaster we have been to and we’ve only had problems twice before with host governments in China

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Meltdown danger

The situation in Japan is deteriorating further. In the early hours of this morning, the last workers are said to have left the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant as the danger of a nuclear meltdown grew. There have been explosions in three of the plant’s reactors and a fourth one is on fire. Everyone within a 30 kilometre radius has been told to stay indoors, and the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet, stationed more than 100 miles away to help earthquake victims, sailed farther away from the stricken plant after detecting unusual levels of radioactivity in the air. The Japanese Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, has confirmed that, “substantial amounts of radiation

Monday

Alex Massie

When the Sea Invades

Plenty of folk have posted this video of the Japanese tsunami but if you haven’t seen it yet then check it out. It’s not gruesome but it is extraordinary and, to use the word properly for once, awesome. Make sure you watch right to the end. UPDATE: Ooops. Should be the right link now.

Friday

Peter Hoskin

From the archives: the tsunami of 2004

Devastation today, and devastation when a tsunami swept across Sri Lanka, and other countries around the Indian Ocean, in 2004. Here is Andrew Gilligan’s report from Columbo at the time, which sought to set the facts straight: The littoral truth, Andrew Gilligan, The Spectator, 8 January 2005 Columbo The staff of Unicef’s Sri Lanka operation are in their Colombo offices dealing as best they can with a flood of desperate people, people at the end of their tether, people in overwhelming need of immediate help. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, for instance. Ms Amanpour, or at least her producer, wants two orphans, preferably brothers who have lost at least six other members

Peter Hoskin

Disaster in Japan

Graphs and tables cannot ever convey the full tragedy of the situation in Japan, but the one above captures an important fact: that today’s earthquake is historic in size. At 8.9 magnitude, this Japanese disaster is the 7th largest on the US Geological Survey’s books. Because it struck on the seabed, its destructive energy is distilled into the tsunami that is now sweeping across the island. What happens next is uncertain and could potentially worsen the catastrophe. A grim chorus of warning sirens is sounding from the coastlines of the Pacific, as everywhere from the Philippines to the west coast of America readies itself against the swells that may or

Peter Hoskin

Clegg ushers in the next phase of the coalition

What have the Lib Dems ever done for us? That’s the question that Nick Clegg sets about answering in interview with the Independent today — and he does so with righteous vigour. “Brick by brick, policy by policy, decision by decision, sometimes almost invisibly,” he insists, “we are putting in place good policies that will make a long and lasting difference.” He dwells, and rightfully so, on the pupil premium and raised personal allowance. “All these things will outlive the immediate task of dealing with the deficit.” This salesmanship is only to be expected from Clegg, speaking on the eve of his party’s spring conference and in the aftermath of

Monday

David Blackburn

China eclipses the Japanese economic miracle

Official figures suggest that China has replaced Japan as the world’s second largest economy, after an estimated 10 percent growth rate left China with an economy worth close to $5.8trillion at the end of quarter four 2010. Japanese growth hovered around the 3 percent mark in 2010 with a total GDP value of $5.47 trillion. Analysts have told the BBC that it is ‘realistic’ that China will overhaul the US’ economy in about a decade, which, as Pete has demonstrated, does not look too outrageous a suggestion.  All of this puts me in mind of the European Union. The CIA World Factbook records that the EU leads the globe in

Saturday

Lee Langley

Living dolls

Born in Japan, growing up in America in the Sixties, Yoko Kawaguchi was perplexed by the persistence of what she felt to be an anachronistic image of Japanese culture: the geisha. ‘That mincing, simpering personification of female subservience to the male infuriated me,’ she writes in the introduction to Butterfly’s Sisters. Her book explores the Western portrayal of Japanese women with emphasis on the geisha, from the mid-19th century to the present day, comparing perception with reality, misunderstandings compounded by prejudice. She details the geisha’s appearance from head to toe (tortoiseshell hairpin to wooden-soled geta), and the life, from the market in virginity to retirement and/or violent death, encompassing history,