Japan
Hirohito, MacArthur and other villains
The history of ‘great events’, Voltaire wrote, is ‘hardly more than the history of crimes’. Physically, the war in Asia…
Welcome to Japan’s best kept cultural secret: an art island with an underground museum
In his introductory remarks to the Afro–Eurasian Eclipse, one of his later suites for jazz orchestra, Duke Ellington remarked —…
What Samsung’s new TVs owe to Jeremy Bentham
Watching brief Samsung warned users of its voice-activated televisions that what they said in front of the TV could be…
Don't believe the gloom-mongers: deflation will be good for Britain
Campaigning in Putney in 1978, Mrs Thatcher famously took out a pair of scissors and cut a pound note down…
Let’s all become Japanese for a while
This is a good time to write about a nation’s resilience in the face of calamity. I am referring to…
Onsen: dive into another side of Japan
Kate Crockett wallows happily in the natural hot baths of Kyushu
How to fight Europe’s demons of deflation
The new fear haunting Europe
Peter Phillips is mugged by a gang of Praetorius-loving six-year-old girls in China
We have read about the remarkable opening up of China in recent years: how many people live there and how…
Proof that the Japanese know how to make great Bordeaux
Château Lagrange, a St Julien third growth, has the largest acreage of any Bordeaux classed growth. For much of the…
My addiction to the bullet train
Stephen Bayley explains why he has become addicted to Japan’s Shinkansen
When a Chinese and a Japanese visit Tokyo's Yasukuni war shrine
What does freedom mean to you? That’s the question the BBC World Service has been asking of us through its…
Is there a way to live without economic growth?
During Japan’s lost decade in the 1990s I found myself handing out rice balls to Tokyo’s homeless on the banks…
Italo Calvino's essays, Collection of Sand, is a brainy delight
The Japanese are sometimes said to suffer from ‘outsider person shock’ (gaijin shokku) when travelling abroad. Recently in London we…
