Abe’s demons
JAPAN’S imperious newspapers rarely issue apologies; two in six months is unheard of. In August, the liberal Asahi Shimbun admitted running stories based on discredited testimony by a former Japanese soldier who said he had corralled Korean women into wartime military brothels. Last week, the Asahi’s conservative archrival, Yomiuri Shimbun, said sorry to its 10m readers for using the term “sex sla
Moment of reckoning
Moment of reckoningShinzo Abe’s expected victory in next week’s snap election will leave him no excuse for further backsliding on structural reform THERE is little doubt that Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, sees himself as a leader with an historic mission. In an interview with The Economist, he recalled the revolutionaries from his home prefecture of Yamaguchi who in the 1860s overthrew the o
Abe’s last chance
Abe’s last chanceJapan desperately needs economic reform; Shinzo Abe still offers the best chance of that TWO years ago Shinzo Abe ran for office vowing to end Japan’s long economic malaise by banishing deflation and smashing the old habits that impeded growth. He promised to make a country suffering a collapse in confidence once again stand tall. Mr Abe won the election in a landslide, yet barely
Cryptography for dummies
Cryptography for dummiesTo the alarm of some lawmakers, scrambling data becomes easy as encryption turns into the default option on digital devices A CAMPAIGN by American and British lawmakers and security officials to get social-media companies to take more responsibility for handing over information about criminals and terrorists using their networks gathered pace this week. It is happening beca
The spy who hacked me
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Solar shambles
EIGHTY miles north-west of Fukushima’s hulking nuclear corpse, Yauemon Sato, a small businessman, has charged into the solar-power business. Mr Sato has rented land, hired a workforce and lined up ¥80m ($6.8m) in capital from local investors and banks. His company says it can produce electricity for about 700 households. But the local power utility is refusing to buy more than a quarter of it.
To the district born
THERE is a saying in Japan that a monkey that falls from a tree is still a monkey, but a member of parliament who falls is a nobody. Apart from some opportunities in a tiny lobbying industry, there are few prospects for cast-aside politicians. So an approaching snap election on December 14th is sparking anxiety in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)—except, that is, among a swelling class of politi
Attack of the cybermen
Attack of the cybermenSophisticated viruses will be the workhorses of 21st-century spying. But there should be rules IF ASKED why they spied on the computers of their rivals (and allies), the authors of Regin, a sophisticated computer virus that seems to have been designed by a Western government, would presumably echo the proverbial bank robber, and reply “because that’s where the secrets are”.
Should digital monopolies be broken up?
Should digital monopolies be broken up?European moves against Google are about protecting companies, not consumers ALTHOUGH no company is mentioned by name, it is very clear which American internet giant the European Parliament has in mind in a resolution that has been doing the rounds in the run-up to a vote on November 27th. One draft calls for “unbundling search engines from other commercial se
Same race, same horse
Same race, same horseShinzo Abe has called a snap poll to consolidate power; voters should give him one more chance WHEN Shinzo Abe made the case, in late 2012, that he was the man to save the economy and revive Japan, voters handed him a landslide general-election win. This week, just two years on, the prime minister dissolved the Diet’s lower house and declared a snap election for December 14th.
Big bazookas
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Party on
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iPhone mania
WHO said that smartphones were past their prime? That certainly does not seem the case at the top end of the market. Apple proved even optimists wrong when it announced on October 20th that it had sold a record 39m iPhones in the fourth quarter of the firm's accounting year. Demand for Apple's two new devices, the iPhone 6 and the bigger iPhone 6 Plus, both launched last month, largely explains wh
What a ride
EVEN as it faces its worst volcano disaster in decades, in which dozens of hikers were killed on the slopes of an erupting Mount Ontake, Japan has managed to celebrate one of its technological triumphs. Fifty years ago this week the first Shinkansen bullet train pulled out of Tokyo station bound for Osaka, a flash of blue and white through what was still a grimy, beat-up megalopolis. At once it be
Spin and substance
IN OSAKA’s strongly Korean Tsuruhashi district, a 14-year-old Japanese girl went out into the streets last year calling through a loudspeaker for a massacre of Koreans. In Tokyo’s Shin-Okubo neighbourhood, home to one of the largest concentrations of Koreans in Japan, many people say the level of anti-foreigner vitriol—on the streets and on the internet—is without modern precedent. Racists chant s
Quantitative freezing
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