Tag Archives: Japan
Previews: The Economist Magazine – Dec 16, 2023
Can you have a healthy democracy without a common set of facts?
America’s presidential election is a test of that proposition
Journalists should not spend much of their time writing about journalism. The world is more interesting than the inky habits of the people who report on it. But this week we are making an exception, because the discovery and dissemination of information matters a lot to politics. Don’t take our word for it: “A popular government,” wrote James Madison in 1822, “without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both.” Were Thomas Jefferson offered a choice between a government without newspapers and newspapers without a government, he said that he would choose the press (though that is probably going a bit far).
Iran’s regime is weaker than it looks, and therefore more pliable
America should deter it from escalating the Gaza war, but also engage with it
Twelve months ago Iran was reeling from protests sparked by the death in custody of a young woman who had been arrested for showing too much hair. Its theocratic regime was increasingly isolated, as Arab states forged closer ties with its enemy, Israel. The economy was a mess, adding to popular anger at Iran’s ageing supreme leader and inept president. The Islamic Republic had not seemed so vulnerable in decades.
Previews: The Economist Magazine – Dec 9, 2023
Israel and Palestine: How peace is possible
A peace process can go wrong in many ways, but a real possibility exists that it could go right
How to stop over-medicalising mental health
What the world could learn from Britain’s flawed approach
A messy contest is coming to a head behind Donald Trump
Our poll tracker sheds light on that competition. It may yet matter
Autumn Tours: Saiho-ji Moss Temple, Kyoto, Japan
Previews: The Economist Magazine – Dec 2, 2023
A new age of the worker will overturn conventional thinking
Around the rich world, wage gaps are shrinking
Few ideas are more unshakable than the notion that the rich keep getting richer while ordinary folks fall ever further behind. The belief that capitalism is rigged to benefit the wealthy and punish the workers has shaped how millions view the world, whom they vote for and whom they shake their fists at. It has been a spur to political projects on both left and right, from the interventionism of Joe Biden to the populism of Donald Trump. But is it true?
A religious revolution is under way in the Middle East
Can it survive the Gaza war?
Old stereotypes are haunting the Middle East once more. The biggest butchery of Israeli civilians since the state’s creation, carried out on October 7th, has been followed by a slaughter of Palestinian civilians. America, which has funded, armed and defended Israel is again an object of ire. So are its Western allies. Together they are blamed for facilitating Gaza’s pummelling and the displacement of its people. A truce which began on November 24th, and which was set to expire as The Economist went to press, had led to the release of 81 hostages and 180 Palestinian detainees as of November 28th.
Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – Dec 1, 2023
Times Literary Supplement (December 1, 2023): The new issue features Godzilla returns! – Japan’s nuclear nightmare; Fear of flying at 50; Woolf and the Monuments woman; The lure of Vesuvius, Christmas Books and more…
Previews: The Economist Magazine – Nov 25, 2023
Progress on climate change has not been fast enough, but it has been real
And the world needs to learn from it
The agreement at the conference of the parties (cop) to the un Framework Convention on Climate Change, which took place in Paris in 2015, was somewhat impotent. As many pointed out at the time, it could not tell countries what to do; it could not end the fossil-fuel age by fiat; it could not draw back the seas, placate the winds or dim the noonday sun. But it could at least lay down the law for subsequent cops, decreeing that this year’s should see the first “global stocktake” of what had and had not been done to bring the agreement’s overarching goals closer.
Lessons from the ascent of the United Arab Emirates
How to thrive in a fractured world
In Argentina Javier Milei faces an economic crisis
The radical libertarian is taking over a country on the brink
Japan Views: Showa Kinen Park Tokyo Autumn 2023 Illumination Night Walk
Previews: The Economist Magazine – Nov 18, 2023
Donald Trump poses the biggest danger to the world in 2024
What his victory in America’s election would mean
Ashadow looms over the world. In this week’s edition we publish The World Ahead 2024, our 38th annual predictive guide to the coming year, and in all that time no single person has ever eclipsed our analysis as much as Donald Trump eclipses 2024. That a Trump victory next November is a coin-toss probability is beginning to sink in.
Will Japan rediscover its dynamism?
Rising prices and animal spirits give it a long-awaited opportunity
Global investors are giddy about Japan again. Warren Buffett made his first visit to Tokyo in more than a decade this spring; he has built up big holdings in five trading houses that offer exposure to a cross-section of Japan Inc. Last month Larry Fink, ceo of BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, joined the pilgrimage to Japan’s capital. “History is repeating itself,” he told Kishida Fumio, the prime minister. He likened the moment to Japan’s “economic miracle” of the 1980s. Even disappointing gdp figures released on November 15th will not dent investors’ optimism.
Japan Views: Artist Mariko Mori – ‘Gods & The Future’
“It seems to me that a lot of our conceptual ideas are already carried out in the past. And we’re at a point to inherit those ideas to the future.”
“When I was nine years old, I was looking through her collection of postcards of all the Western art,” Mori remembers: “Somehow I found Jackson Pollock’s no. 13 painting. And I was so thrilled. I didn’t know what abstract painting was, but I really felt freedom.” Today, Mariko Mori works in various mediums, from photography and sculpture to installation and architecture. Her studio – and home – was the first architectural project she did. The house is located at Okinawa, a tropical island south of Japan.
Inspired by the surrounding nature Mori wanted “the house to be an extension of that. A part of nature.” The untraditional shape of the house is eye-catching: “Originally, I was thinking of just building an architecture building, but it became more like a sculpture or form,” she says and continues: “The shape tried to accommodate the wind coming from the north.” This explains why the building is smaller in one part and bigger in another.
Mariko Mori is a Japanese multidisciplinary artist. She is known for her photographs and videos of her hybridized future self, often presented in various guises and featuring traditional Japanese motifs. Her work often explores themes of technology, spirituality and transcendence.
Boomers Daily 