Articles

27.11.20

~Women in Japan are sometimes regarded as having a lower social status than men. They also face limited professional opportunities. Yet a compelling new book...

08.11.20

So how was it for you? No prizes for guessing to what I am referring. Obviously, it was pretty good in the end for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, less so for...

08.11.20 Publication: AVANTI

After all the arguments about Russian interference in 2016, the US presidential and congressional elections of 2020 feel like a rather majestic democratic...

07.11.20 Publication: Mainichi

Throughout Donald Trump’s occupancy of the White House since January 2017 I have had in my mind comparisons with the previous billionaire, narcissistic...

06.11.20 Publication: La Stampa

The outcome of America’s elections brings to mind a line from two famous American entertainers, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy: “Another fine mess you’ve...

05.11.20 Publication: Financial Times

“The Powerful and the Damned: Private Diaries in Turbulent Times”. By Lionel Barber. W.H. Allen, 460pp There aren’t really any other jobs like it....

02.11.20

“In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone…”. It feels a bit early to quote a Christmas carol, with...

06.10.20 Publication: Project Syndicate

DUBLIN – Japan’s new prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has arrived with a suite of ambitious policy ideas, including plans to digitize government services...

02.10.20

Every generation, as they get older, sees things happening among younger people that allows them to conclude that society must have gone mad. For me, in recent...

01.10.20 Publication: AVANTI

The American election always matters to the outside world, for whatever anyone may claim about the decline of US power or the demise of US hegemony, the...

25.09.20

I cannot pretend that these are not turbulent times, when an American president refuses to confirm that there will be a peaceful transfer of power after the US...

20.09.20 Publication: AVANTI

The American election always matters to the outside world, for whatever anyone may claim about the decline of US power or the demise of US hegemony, the...

19.09.20 Publication: Mainichi Shimbun

Historians are divided by one quite fundamental debate. One school, who believe in what is often known as “the great man theory of history” holds that...

18.09.20

I have to begin with a confession. In the blog that I wrote on August 31st, perhaps still feeling overly relaxed thanks to the summer, I said something foolish...

09.09.20 Publication: Nikkei Business

The Covid-19 pandemic crisis has combined forces with the already ongoing clash between the United States and China about trade and technology to give new...

29.08.20 Publication: La Stampa

All political careers end in failure. That saying, by a famous British Conservative politician of the 1970s, Enoch Powell, applies especially to those...

29.08.20

With Abe Shinzo’s sudden resignation as prime minister, again on health grounds as after his first short period in office in 2007, it is right to ask what...

28.08.20 Publication: Project Syndicate

DUBLIN – Shinzo Abe’s sudden resignation (on health grounds) ends the tenure of Japan’s longest-serving prime minister. The country’s most...

15.08.20 Publication: AVANTI

One of the great paradoxes of the covid-19 crisis is this: the United Kingdom, where a charismatic prime minister, Boris Johnson, recently won a powerful...

24.07.20

Historians will tell us that four months is far too short a time for permanent social or behavioural changes to occur, even if the pandemic already feels as if...

22.07.20

  Japan Society: Webinar Series 13: The Pandemic and its Impact on Gender Equality in Japan and the UK with Yoriko Goto and Heather...

05.07.20 Publication: Mainichi Shimbun

After nearly three and a half years in office, we all know far more about how the Trump administration functions or doesn’t function than we knew about most...

05.07.20 Publication: La Stampa

In June 1989 China used tanks and bullets to impose its will on young protestors in and around Tiananmen Square in Beijing, killing thousands. In July 2020...

03.07.20

As a boy I was always more interested in subjects like history and geography than in science, but for some reason I have always remembered watching Professor...