Francis Pike is a historian and author of Hirohito’s War, The Pacific War 1941-1945 and Empires at War: A Short History of Modern Asia Since World War II.
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‘The road was frozen… Komako hitched up the skirt of her kimono and tucked it into her obi [broad sash]. The moon shone like a blade frozen in blue ice.’ When I think of the kimono (literally: ‘a thing to wear’) my thoughts turn to Yukiguni, the 1948 book by Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata.
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On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Damian Thompson says his addiction to the piano has only got worse with age; Francis Pike ponders if Kim Jong-Un is lining up a female successor; Ysenda Maxtone-Graham explains the art to left-wing boasting; and finally, Lloyd Evans contemplates becoming a magistrate. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.
As a birthday treat, a good father might take his ten-year-old daughter to the ballet or a Disney movie. Three years ago, North Korea’s ruling dictator Kim Jong-un (a.k.a. ‘Brilliant Comrade’) took his ten-year-old daughter Kim Ju-ae to the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile. It was her first public outing. Subsequent kiddie treats have
According to unconfirmed reports, General Zhang Youxia, China’s vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), sent a company of troops (over a hundred or more) to the government’s Yingxi Hotel in western Beijing on January 18. Their mission was to arrest Xi Jinping. A few hours before, the Chinese president – alerted by an informant
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The Peak is where the smart set in Hong Kong has always lived. It’s an area of relative peace and tranquillity that sits above the hubbub of the city. Before the Pacific war, Chinese people were banned from living there. It was from her terrace here on 8 December 1941 (the day after Japan’s carrier
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A former heavy metal drummer and biker is not someone the world would expect to become a prime minister of Japan. Particularly if that someone is a woman. But that is what is likely to happen tomorrow. Last month, 64-year-old Sanae Takaichi became the first female head of the Liberal Democrat Party – the party
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On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: James Heale reports on the battle for the north; Robert Hardman provides his royal notebook; who’s really in charge of China, asks Francis Pike; Henrietta Harding goes on Ozempic safari; and, Mary Wakefield explains how to raise a patriot. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.
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First: a look ahead to President Trump’s state visit next week Transatlantic tensions are growing as the row over Peter Mandelson’s role provides an ominous overture to Donald Trump’s state visit next week. Political editor Tim Shipman has the inside scoop on how No. 10 is preparing. Keir Starmer’s aides are braced for turbulence. ‘The
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Xi Jinping effectively vanished in July and the first half of August. Some China watchers speculated that his unexplained absence was a sign that he was losing his grip on power. But he has since reappeared and been very visible again. At the end of last month, he visited Tibet, then indulged in a high-profile,
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China will celebrate the 80th anniversary of the end of the ‘war of resistance against Japanese aggression’ (i.e. what we call VJ day) tomorrow. Given that Japan’s invasion of China started some four years earlier than Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941, and cost an estimated 20 to 30 million Chinese lives, this week’s
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This weekend, Formula One returns to where it all started 75 years ago: Silverstone. But although the first F1 Grand Prix took place in the UK, the sport was initially dominated by Italian cars and Latin drivers, rather than Brits. Dottore Giuseppe Farina, a lawyer turned racing driver, won that first F1 race in front
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On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Peter Frankopan argues that Israel’s attack on Iran has been planned for years (2:00); just how bad are things for Kemi Badenoch, asks Tim Shipman (13:34); Francis Pike says there are plenty of reasons to believe in ghosts (21:49); Hermione Eyre, wife of Alex Burghart MP, reviews Sarah Vine’s
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British politics and ghosts are subjects that rarely meet. Sometimes an MP or parliamentary aide might report a sighting of one of various spirits that inhabit the Palace of Westminster. It is said, for instance, that the ghost of the assassin John Bellingham haunts the Commons lobby at the spot where he gunned down Spencer
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OnlyFans is giving the Treasury what it wants – but should we be concerned? ‘OnlyFans,’ writes Louise Perry, ‘is the most profitable content subscription service in the world.’ Yet ‘the vast majority of its content creators make very little from it’. So why are around 4 per cent of young British women selling their wares
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Stories about Xi Jinping’s father, Xi Zhongxun, are blowing up on social media. He died in 2002, so why the interest in him now? The weird fact is that Xi Zhongxun is being talked about in the West because he is not being talked about in China. Omission is the perverse way that one learns
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Sorry to disappoint antisemites, but Operation Starvation is not an Israeli plan to murder millions of Palestinians; it was a US plan to starve Japan into submission at the end of the Pacific War. However, comparisons with Israel Defence Force’s (IDF) current strategy for defeating Hamas, and the changing legal landscape of warfare since World
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While drinking, dancing and laughter were the order of the day in Britain on the VE Day, things were not so hunky dory in Germany. At the liberated Belsen concentration camp situated 65 miles to the south of Hamburg, nurse Joan Rudman cut a depressed and lonely figure. She recalled: ‘One could hardly think of
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From a western perspective, memorising all 114 chapters of the Quran might seem an unusual qualification for a national leader. Yet this is a defining feature of the résumé of General Syed Asim Munir, Pakistan’s chief of army staff since November 2022. To become a Hafiz – one who knows by heart the entire Quran
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Yesterday evening Indian prime minister Narendra Modi authorised missile strikes on jihadi training camps located in Pakistan’s East Punjab and Pakistani Kashmir. It is retaliation for the attack on Hindu tourists allegedly carried out by the Pakistani Jihadi groups Lashkar-e-Taibi and Jaish-e-Muhammad in Indian controlled Kashmir on 22 April. Does this mean all-out war between
The word ‘ninja’ itself is less than 100 years old
