Philip Patrick is an exiled Scot, who lectures at a Tokyo university and contributes to the Japan Times
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The 67-year-old Shigeru Ishiba will become Japan’s new prime minister on 1 October after winning a surprisingly exciting play-off vote against his rival Sanae Takaichi. For a moment it looked as if Japanese MPs were set to elect the country’s first female leader (Takaichi was ahead of Ishiba in the first round of voting) but
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Yet another natural disaster has struck in Japan as floods and landslides in the Noto peninsula, precipitated by ‘unprecedented’ rainfall, have killed seven (according to the state broadcaster NHK) with 10 people missing. As usual, these numbers are expected to rise. The Ishikawa area was pounded on Saturday with the heaviest continuous rainfall (540 millimetres
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The revamped Champions League kicks off this week with all the gushing hyperbole we have come to expect from this glossy, money-saturated event. Five British football teams will be in action along with a record 31 others for the first-round ‘league’ stage. The difference this year is that the marketing blitz is accompanied by earnest
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Most people know that Japan is a country cursed with considerable seismic activity; frequent, and very occasionally devastating, earthquakes and tsunamis are a fact of life – and death. Less well known is the blessing the country’s position along the Ring of Fire brings – or potentially brings: abundant geothermal energy. It is estimated that
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England’s interim manager Lee Carsley has intimated that he will not be singing the national anthem as his team takes on Ireland in the Nations League in Dublin today – his first game in charge. Carsley is at least being consistent in this, he similarly demurred as a player for Ireland and when he was
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An important international conference will take place this week in South Korea, focused on the peninsula’s security concerns. The UK will not be participating. The reason? A lack of female ‘representation’, apparently. It seems that all the 18 of the initially invited speakers to the Global Korea Forum were men, though since the UK pullout
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Unlike a slightly more high-profile reunion event, the ticketing website for the Scottish referendum tenth anniversary show is not expected to crash. But there will no doubt be much looking back in anger at the IMAX theatre at the Science Centre in Glasgow on 14 February as ‘the stars’ (it says) of the 2014 referendum gather to
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The Japanese are battening down the hatches – again – as typhoon Shanshan wreaks devastation to the south-west of the country, with worse, possibly much worse, to come for the rest of us further north. Millions of people have been told to flee their homes in the face of what officials are calling one of the strongest storms ever
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Six men have died on Japan’s iconic Mount Fuji since the start of the climbing season in July. This figure, two more than last year, is especially worrying given that steps had only recently been taken to mitigate the dangers of climbing the mountain. Various restrictions were introduced earlier this year to deal with overcrowding,
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‘Kanko kankai’ (tourism pollution) is the latest buzz phrase here in Japan as the double-edged samurai sword of the visitor boom continues to cause profit but also pain. The latest problem, along with the overcrowding, poor behaviour, and squeezed out locals, is a shortage of staff at the main attractions and the hotels and restaurants
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The new Premiership season kicked off this weekend and, with all the usual hype, will come novelties. There are the gamely optimistic new arrivals and returnees, no doubt a breakout star or two, some eyebrow-raising new hairstyles (Mo Salah) and some ingeniously tweaked – and therefore ‘must-have’ – revenue-gouging strips. As ever, there will be
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Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida has announced he will be stepping down as leader of the Liberal Democratic party next month. This means yet another new leader, the 13th in my quarter century in the country (unless one of the previous incumbents fancies another go) but almost certainly not a radical new direction. Whoever wins the LDP leadership
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Nagasaki’s Peace Park held a ceremony today to mark the 79th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on the city (which killed 74,000 people). It was a sombre and moving occasion, as it always is, and one usually attended by high level representatives of all nations. This year was different though: the ambassadors
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Japan’s Nikkei 225 index registered its biggest ever daily fall on Monday, plummeting by over 12 per cent and continuing the extraordinary collapse that began last Friday. Meanwhile, the Yen, which had been slowly eroding in value for months continued its dramatic resurrection moving from 162 to the dollar to under 140. At the time
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Japan is running out of rice. Stocks have fallen to their lowest levels in decades, prompting fears that emergency reserves may need to be accessed. Prices have hit a 30-year high as private companies held just 1.56 million tons in June, the lowest level since 1999 and 20 per cent less than the previous year.
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Sadiq Khan has suggested that the long rumoured prospect of Premier League fixtures being played in the United States is now inevitable. Khan, a Liverpool supporter (largely an armchair one), told the Sports Agents podcast that he believes a stateside ‘international round’ of Premier League fixtures, similar to the NFL and NBL games played in
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Japan’s Olympics have got off to the worst possible start. The captain of their women’s gymnastics team Shoko Miyata has withdrawn, or more accurately been obliged to withdraw, after admitting breaking the team’s code of conduct while at their training camp in Monaco. Her Olympic dream is over and she leaves in disgrace. So, what
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The Japanese singer, actor and heartthrob Matsumoto Jun, who I’ve always thought of as an Oriental David Cassidy (thus showing my age), will make his UK acting debut later this year when he appears in acclaimed playwright Hideki Noda’s very loose adaptation of the Brothers Karamazof at Sadler’s Wells. Jun is, not to sell him
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Portugal squeezed through to the Euros quarter finals last night after a penalty shoot-out victory against plucky Slovenia. Or perhaps I should say Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal squeezed through, as whatever Roberto Martinez’s team does and however much or little their 39-year-old talisman contributes, the story always seems to be about him. The Beeb used to
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In a move that sounds like something out of the new Francis Ford Coppola film Megalopolis, the Japanese government has announced that it will build a 300-mile conveyer belt for trade to link Tokyo and Osaka. The ‘Auto-flow Road’ which is projected to be the first of many such arteries linking Japan, will consist of conveyer belts either