Ryu Murakami is apparently ‘the enfant terrible of contemporary Japanese literature’. I suppose I should start this review of his four books translated into English this year by making general comments about the strangeness of Japanese culture. Yet such observations have been made ad nauseum, and only reflect the Westerner’s shock that anything exists outside their sphere of influence. […]
Posts Tagged ‘Japan’
Abenomics: works in Japan, rejected by Osborne – and now Balls
Jun 8th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Since Shinzo Abe came to power, the Japanese stock market has risen an astonishing 50% in 5 months, and the replacement of the fatalism which has dogged Japan’s economy by a new burst of policy activism has profound implications for the UK. There is another precedent for this policy activism other than the General Theory […]
Share:
Lessons from Japan
Nov 23rd, 2012 by Michael Burke.Japanese GDP contracted by an annualised 3.5% in the 3rd quarter of 2012. This annualised rate means that GDP fell by 0.9% in the quarter compared to the 2nd quarter. The Japanese economy had barely found its footing after the onset of the global economic crisis when it was hit by the devastating earthquake, tsunami and […]
Share:
Japanisation: the economics of extended stagnation
Aug 25th, 2011 by David Osler.Neologism of the week award goes to the Financial Times for coining the term ‘Japanisation’ as a shorthand description for current economic trends in Europe and North America. You can read just what various commentators intend by the word here, but if you want it in plain English, the underlying idea is that the rest […]
Share:
Fukushima should end any nuclear revival in Britain
Mar 21st, 2011 by Michael Meacher.Angela Merkel rightly called Fukushima “a turning point for the world”. It is. This was no glitch in an unsophisticated backwater of a State that could be explained away by poor design or low operating standards; this happened in one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world with an unsurpassed reputation for detail and […]
Share:
Caveat nuclear
Mar 16th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.The government’s pro-nuclear chief scientist, John Beddington, immediately leapt in with assurances that Fukushima is very different from Chernobyl (which it is, but that’s not the point: Fukushima is highly dangerous in its own right) and not spewing out radioactivity because the Japanese had taken the right precautionary measures (so why did 180,000 people have to be evacuated?).
