Philip Patrick is an exiled Scot, who lectures at a Tokyo university and contributes to the Japan Times
Tokyo This week was the tenth anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the country. It, along with the tsunami it triggered, claimed an estimated 19,000 lives. I was walking in the Shibuya district of Tokyo when the quake knocked me off my feet. I recall being first
When Richard Lucas, a maths teacher, uploaded a video criticising former Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson for having what he called a ‘fatherless child’, he anticipated some controversy. But, nearly three years on, Lucas is still shocked by the reaction it sparked. Lucas, who is a Christian, was hauled in front of the General Teaching
Japan finally began its Covid-19 vaccination programme this week after a consignment of 60,000 vials arrived by charter flight from Europe. Medical staff will be first in line to be jabbed, followed by Japan’s innumerable seniors (presumably starting with the super-centenarians), then those with pre-existing conditions, and finally the general population. A rapid and successful
Yoshiro Mori the 83-year-old former Japanese prime minister has resigned from his position as president of the Tokyo Olympic Organising Committee less than 6 months before the games are due to start. Mori’s crime? Making spectacularly unwise comments during a discussion of how to increase women’s representation on the committee. ‘When you increase the number
‘Analytical intelligence, absolutely. Emotional intelligence, zero’. That was Tony Blair’s withering assessment of his successor Gordon Brown. It is a description which could as easily be applied to Japan’s beleaguered prime minister Yoshihide Suga. The former chief cabinet secretary, long-time right-hand man and ‘brain’ of long serving PM Shinzo Abe is showing alarming Brownite tendencies in
Any long-term resident of Japan will know that ‘reading the air’, as the locals put it, is an essential skill for understanding what is really being communicated behind the glossy lacquer box patina of courtesy and understatement of Japanese discourse. Bad news is never expressed directly and you need to decode the subtle hints embedded
Japan may have avoided being locked down this winter, but is its longest serving PM Shinzo Abe about to be locked up? That is the alarming prospect that faces Abe as he struggles to explain his role, and that of his advisors, in a scandal that has beset him in and out of office for
As a Scot, I found the news that my country had registered, by some distance, the most drug-related deaths in Europe last year profoundly depressing. But my sprits sank even lower when I saw the reaction. Rather than provoking a genuine debate about how to tackle this crisis, the dismal statistics merely set off yet
‘We all know it’s bull and we’ve had enough.’ This is not the kind of language I have come to expect from the Japanese. But this protester, who lived for twelve years in Reading, which accounted for his excellent, if rather fruity English, was clearly angry. He was one of hundreds outside Tokyo’s Shinjuku station
David Ogilvy once said that ‘a good advertisement is one that sells the product without drawing attention to itself’. If so, the new Nike ad currently running in Japan is about as big a failure as you can get. It has certainly drawn plenty of attention to itself, producing more angry denunciations than sales. The ad snappily
‘Has that orange baboon gone yet?’ asked a senior professor in the teacher’s room at my university yesterday. The remark went down well, despite the unfashionable remark about someone’s skin colour and the dubious zoomorphic comparison. As did an earlier comment from another colleague joking about how he’d like to replace Trump’s corona medication with
There is a rare treat for classical music fans in Tokyo this week with the visit of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under their star conductor Valery Gergiev. And it’s even more of a treat when you consider the conditions under which the concerts are taking place, with full audiences rather than the socially distanced half
Japan’s new prime minister Yoshihide Suga is talking tough on climate change. Suga has promised that Japan will become carbon neutral by 2050, a step up from the previous commitment of an 80 per cent cut in emissions. But is this all a load of bluster? While a certain opacity is expected in formal Japanese (a famous
There’s a good chance that nothing that occurs in the new Japanese PM’s tenure will be nearly as interesting as how he got the job in the first place. While not quite in the Belarusian league, Yoshihide Suga’s victory in the ruling Liberal Democratic party leadership election was nonetheless a stitch-up of staggering brazenness for a law-governed
Japan’s longest-serving Prime Minister, Shinzō Abe, has announced that he will step down, as soon as his replacement is selected. This is the second time that Abe has resigned the premiership (the first being in 2007) and ill health has again been cited as the reason. Abe has visited hospital several times in recent weeks
If there is one country where the wearing of face masks in response to the coronavirus outbreak has caused no controversy whatsoever, it is Japan. There is no debate about face masks here, and it often seems as if many Japanese would be happy to don the flimsy cloth coverings all year round, regardless of
In a striking contrast of priorities, as the UK government offers discounted fast food vouchers to revitalise the restaurant and hospitality sector, the Japanese have chosen a different, healthier, method of boosting their own Corona blighted economy: half-price domestic travel. The Japanese government anticipates the move will see hordes of travellers roaming across the country
Freemasons beware – the traditional handshake may be the latest victim of the coronavirus, cancelled in our post-pandemic quest for a sanitised contactless future. According to testimony before the science and technology select committee, in the interests of public health, the good old-fashioned grip and grin should be replaced with the chaste but benign Japanese
Few politicians have come out of the corona crisis as well as Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike. As the face of the metropolitan area’s official response to the pandemic, the 68-year-old former cabinet minister has won plaudits for her nightly face-masked updates and guidance briefings. For her efforts, she was rewarded with a landslide in last
Japan has announced a colossal stimulus package (£1.75 trillion) as it attempts to breathe life into its Covid-19 damaged economy. But with its finances already in a parlous state before the pandemic struck, economists and policy makers around the world are nervous about where this dramatic intervention in one of world’s most fiscally conservative nations
