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MOST HAVE to wait until their centenary to receive birthday wishes from the king of Britain. But King Charles III made an exception for “a self-made entrepreneur worth billions of dollars and a unicef children’s ambassador on top”. The monarch was feting a figure more recognisable than any billionaire or emissary: Hello Kitty, who turns 50 this year.
JAPAN’S RULING coalition failed in lower-house elections on October 27th to secure a majority in parliament for the first time since 2009. This stunning rebuke of the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) reflects voters’ frustrations over recent political scandals and the rising cost of living. The results are a “severe judgment” of the LDP, said Ishiba Shigeru, who took over as party lead
Japan is remarkably open to AI, but slow to make use of it The land of Doraemon embraces the new technology in theory but not in practice WHICH cultural icons come to mind when an American thinks of artificial intelligence (AI)? The cyborgs of the “Terminator” film series, or Hal of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”—rogue computer systems that rise up to destroy their human creators. What
In a turbulent world, Japan is a quiet force for stability. Yet its domestic politics is stormy. Frequent scandals have undermined trust in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and recently led to the resignation of Kishida Fumio as prime minister. The LDP has now made an unexpected choice to steady the ship in his wake: Ishiba Shigeru, a popular gadfly who has long been an outsider and lost
A tragedy like this “could have happened in any country”, said China’s foreign-ministry spokesman on September 19th. A day earlier, in the southern city of Shenzhen, a Chinese man had stabbed a ten-year-old Japanese boy while he was on his way to school. The boy later died from his injuries. The assailant was arrested at the scene. The authorities have released no information about his motives.
GEOTHERMAL ENERGY may be approaching its Mitchell moment. George Mitchell, a scrappy independent oilman, is known as the father of fracking. Nearly three decades ago, he defied Big Oil and the conventional wisdom of his industry by making practical the hitherto uneconomic technique of pumping liquids and sands into the ground to force out gas and oil from shale rock and other tight geological form
The order to move crackled over the radios at dawn on August 6th. Serhiy, a private in the 80th brigade, was among the first to emerge from the cover of the forest. By the time his unit crossed into Russia, supported by constant tank fire, the border had already been largely destroyed. “Our commanders didn’t spare a single round of artillery,” he says via voice messages from inside Russia’s Kursk
Why Japanese markets have plummetedThe global rout continues, with the Topix experiencing its worst day since 1987 As fears of an American recession spread, stockmarkets around the world have suffered. But none has taken as severe a beating as Japan’s. On August 5th the Topix plunged by 12% in its worst performance since 1987, compared with falls of 2-3% in America, Britain and Europe. The index i
THE PHONEY campaign has ended. The real battle for the White House will be between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and it has only just begun. When Joe Biden withdrew his candidacy on July 21st, Mr Trump was in a commanding position. With a bit over 100 days to turn around his lead, Ms Harris still has enough time to win the presidency. The question is whether she has the ability.
Social-media populists have arrived in JapanA small-town mayor shakes up Tokyo’s election Politics in Japan can be a staid affair. The race to become the governor of Tokyo, which reached its climax on July 7th, was anything but that. Fifty-six candidates, many of them eccentrics, traded barbs. Pets featured on election posters; so, in one case, did pornography. A candidate dressed as the Joker fro
An obscure communist newspaper is shaping Japan’s politicsStories by Shimbun Akahata consistently pack a punch Since Japan’s parliamentary session began three months ago, one issue has dominated the agenda: a financial scandal within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). At the end of last year, prosecutors launched an investigation into factions of the LDP which had failed to report revenue
Izumi Kenta wants to shake up Japan’s oppositionThe centre-left leader tells The Economist his plan for a more serious politics IZUMI KENTA, the leader of Japan’s main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), is itching for change. In an interview with The Economist, the self-declared progressive laments the country’s slow growth and demographic woes. The culprit, he reckons, is the conse
Asian geopolitics is often described in terms of two giants: America, the incumbent superpower, and China, a rising one, standing astride the region and competing to pull smaller countries to their sides, including the ten members of ASEAN, the Association of South-East Asian Nations. But this misses a lot. It elides smaller countries’ agency and oversimplifies what is rarely a Manichaean divide.
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 Fumi
FIVE MONTHS into its counter-offensive, Ukraine has managed to advance by just 17 kilometres. Russia fought for ten months around Bakhmut in the east “to take a town six by six kilometres”. Sharing his first comprehensive assessment of the campaign with The Economist in an interview this week, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, says the battlefield reminds him of the great conf
In a classroom in Warabi, north of Tokyo, an 11-year-old boy chatters in Japanese as he practises writing the characters for “river” and “tree”. The scene is unremarkable, save for the fact that the boy, Boran, is not Japanese but Kurdish. Warabi and the surrounding area are home to around 2,000 Turkish Kurds, a number that has quadrupled in a decade. Kebab shops line the streets and instructions
TO TIME travel back to the 1960s simply step into an Olive Garden. Booths at the chain restaurant, known for its surfeit of breadsticks, are lined with spotted upholstery. The sound of Frank Sinatra playing from old-school speakers evokes thoughts of salesmen in Chevrolets coming home to their darlings in the suburbs for supper. But look carefully and you’ll find that the patrons more closely rese
Japan’s porn industry comes out of the shadowsPoliticians want to protect actors—but many want to be left alone KURUMIN AROMA, a 33-year-old YouTuber who lives near Tokyo, used to dream of becoming a singer. A decade ago, a man approached her on the street and asked her to be a swimsuit model. He also offered to pay for singing classes and help her succeed in the entertainment business. After some
Kobe, in western Japan, is best known for its marbled beef. But feasting on the delicacy was not what brought Igor Korkhovyi to town last month. At an auditorium in the city centre, he and a group of other officials from Ukraine tucked into a day of meetings and lectures. “We should learn from your experience,” he told the region’s governor. Japan’s armed forces, which have not fired a shot in com
“Adam is a special child,” says the voice-over, as the camera pans across abandoned classrooms and deserted maternity wards. “He’s the last child born in Italy.” The short film made for Plasmon, an Italian brand of baby food owned by Kraft-Heinz, a giant American firm, is set in 2050. It imagines an Italy where babies are a thing of the past. It is exaggerating for effect, of course, but not by as
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Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucksBigger isn’t always better A couple of years ago Jake Morgan, a farmer who lives just outside Raleigh, in North Carolina, realised he needed a new vehicle to get around his property. At first he was looking at “side-by-sides”—a sort of off-road utility vehicle. But watching a review on YouTube of one that costs around $30,000 made by John De
According to Indonesian legend, rice was bestowed upon the island of Java by the goddess Dewi Sri. Pitying its inhabitants the blandness of their existing staple, cassava, she taught them how to nurture rice seedlings in lush green paddy fields. In India, the Hindu goddess Annapurna is said to have played a similar role; in Japan, Inari. Across Asia, rice has been conferred with a divine, and usua
Fear of China is pushing India and Japan into each other’s armsAsia’s biggest and richest democracies are close. They could be much closer THE MUGHAL PRINCE Dara Shikoh was beheaded in 1659 after publishing a scandalous book, “The Confluence of the Two Seas”, in which he identified a spiritual affinity between Hinduism and Islam. In 2007 Abe Shinzo, then Japan’s prime minister, borrowed the book’s
Keeping up with the TokugawasThe new shogun reflects on family history and Japan’s looming social change If not for the Meiji Restoration, Tokugawa Iehiro might be running Japan. Instead, the new head of one of Japan’s most eminent dynasties, which ruled from 1603 to 1868, spends his days overseeing its relics at a spacious stone compound down a side-street in Tokyo’s Yoyogi-Uehara neighbourhood.
ASHIHARA MARINA, a 25-year-old from Kanagawa, near Tokyo, wanted to see the world. Last April she seized the opportunity to migrate to Australia through its government’s “working holiday” programme, which affords one-year visas to under-31-year-olds. She spent four months working on a farm in eastern Australia and now works as a barista in Sydney. What started as an adventure has found an economic
Why health-care services are in chaos everywhereNow is an especially bad time to suffer a heart attack The imposition of lockdowns during the covid-19 pandemic had one overarching aim: to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. Governments hoped to space out infections, buying time to build capacity. In the end, however, much of this extra capacity went unused. England’s seven “Nightingale” hosp
Abe Shinzo’s assassin achieved his political goalsIn Japan, political violence looks worryingly effective “Revolution+1”, a new Japanese film, opens with actual footage of the killing of Abe Shinzo, Japan’s former prime minister, last July. The grainy frames show Abe giving a stump speech in Nara while his assassin, Yamagami Tetsuya, approaches from behind wielding a homemade gun. The feature film
What to read (and watch) to understand women in JapanSix books (and one film) on life in one of the rich world’s most sexist countries
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