Philip Patrick

Philip Patrick

Philip Patrick is an exiled Scot, who lectures at a Tokyo university and contributes to the Japan Times

How long can Japan keep foreigners locked out?

A colleague has posted on the ‘Return to Japan’ Facebook page that his hotel quarantine at Tokyo’s Narita airport is set to be extended by ‘at least a week’. This is after testing positive with symptomless Covid on the point of his supposed release. He’s already spent six days locked up in a tiny room with

The march of South Korea’s anti-feminists

The two leading candidates for South Korea’s presidential election in March, Lee Jae-myung of the incumbent Democratic party and Yoon Suk-yeol of the conservative People Power party, have both made men’s rights central to their campaigns. They hope to appeal to the growing constituency of outraged men’s groups who vent their frustration at feminist overreach

Why COP26 flopped

King coal is dead, long live king coal! That might be a fitting epitaph for COP26, which mercifully ended last Friday. It culminated with an agreement, which had not so much been watered down as to have virtually evaporated. Fossil fuels, it seems, are here for the foreseeable. What went wrong? That’s a question the

Is climate change scepticism growing in Japan?

Fumio Kishida, the newly-installed Japanese prime minister, could have been forgiven for giving COP26 a miss. The opening ceremony in Glasgow coincided with the general election he was fighting back home. But Kishida, having won the election, did make the trip, where he gave a speech broadly but not unreservedly supportive of international efforts to

The enduring power of Japan’s doomsday cults

 Tokyo It is now 26 years since the doomsday cult known as Aum Shinrikyu (‘supreme truth’) carried out the worst domestic terrorist attack in Japanese history. Led by their leader Shoko Asahara, Aum released sarin gas on to the Tokyo subway, killing 13 and injuring 6,000. It remains the only time a weapon of mass

Will Mako and Kei be the Japanese Harry and Meghan?

A young royal, seen as a potential future star, falls in love with a commoner and chooses to leave the gilded cage and a life of dutiful service to marry and live a ‘normal’ life in America. The match is controversial for various reasons, not least the royal’s mental health and the non-royal’s family problems;

Meet Japan’s latest unloved leader

Japan will soon have yet another new prime minster: Fumio Kishida. He will be the country’s third leader in as many years, and news of his appointment has been met with neither enthusiasm nor much concern – mainly because nobody really knows who he is, or what to expect from him. Kishida, the 64-year old

Why is Toyota so popular with the Taliban?

While Taliban posing with newly acquired US military hardware has been a searing humiliation for America in recent days, here in Japan the debacle in Afghanistan has led to a different source of embarrassment. A recurring image of coverage from Kabul is of Toyota pick-up trucks ferrying gun-toting fighters around the city. It has given

Farewell, Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s unloved leader

Japanese prime minister Yoshihide Suga has fallen on his sword. Suga announced today that he will not be seeking reelection as leader of his party (the LDP), in effect resigning as prime minister in the process. The decision came without warning but wasn’t a huge surprise: Suga’s government is polling horribly at the moment and it was feared

The rise and fall of the yakuza

For the first time in history, an organised crime ‘yakuza’ boss has been sentenced to death in a Japanese court. Satoru Nomura, head of the Kudo-kai group in Fukuoka, was found guilty of murder and three assaults after a trial held without a jury due to fears of possible intimidation. If a planned appeal fails,

Is Japan about to enter a ‘London-style lockdown’?

Just like the Olympics, which ended a fortnight ago, the Paralympics is set to commence amid a drumbeat of doom. Japan appears to be in the middle of a Covid renaissance, with around 5,000 new cases a day in Tokyo. The games will take place, like the Olympics, in a ‘state of emergency’ that now

Was the Tokyo Olympics a success?

Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s Prime Minister, is a hard man to read. He has a sum total of one facial expression and lives up to the national stereotype of inscrutability. Still, I’m pretty sure I know what was going through his mind at the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics on Sunday night: ‘Thank God, that’s

In defence of Olympic football

Spain takes on Brazil today in the final of the men’s Olympic football tournament. Not interested? Well, if so, you’re probably not alone — Olympic football has a popularity problem. For decades it has suffered from unfavourable comparisons with the big Fifa and Uefa behemoths to the extent that many see the whole thing as

Why should we expect Nicola Sturgeon to support Team GB?

It hasn’t been a great month for Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. First, there was the announcement that an official police investigation would take place into missing money from donations supposedly ‘ring-fenced’ for a future independence campaign; then questions about why Scotland’s vaccination targets had been missed led, apparently, to Sturgeon’s ‘Trump like meltdown’ (how

Are the Japanese finally embracing the Tokyo Olympics?

Such gloom and negativity has surrounded the Tokyo Olympics that cynics were suggesting that, when the grand Olympic countdown clock outside Tokyo station finally reached zero at 8pm on Friday, it should be reset – for August 8th. That way we could all ‘count down’ the days until the whole damn thing was over. And

Tokyo’s doomed Olympics could be the worst yet

The Tokyo 2020/2021 Olympics, which begins on Friday, looks set to be one of the worst in the event’s history. A book detailing all the scandals and mishaps of the games would be longer then the Tales of Genji.  Won way back in 2013, it wasn’t long before allegations of suspicious payments materialised. Since then there have been:

Have Southgate’s England lost their moral compass?

Back in the 1980s the BBC Match of the Day opening credits featured a clip of Manchester United winger Mickey Thomas prostrate on the pitch. He raises himself up and gives a saucy wink to the camera. The implication was that he had ‘won’ a penalty and was cheekily acknowledging his successful deceit. Contrast with

Japan’s punishing workplace culture

Are the world’s hardest workers about to get a well-earned break? That seems to be the hope of the Japanese government, which is trying to encourage companies to ease off a bit and allow their exhausted staff the luxury of a four-day working week. It is hoped this will lead to a healthier work-life balance