...effective and especially Japanese housewives are said to become disgusted when they see Ozawa’s face on their TV screens. In the winter of 2009-10 one was given the impression from newspaper front pages that Ozawa was alleged to have committed mass murder or high treason instead of having connived with his secretaries to what at worst might be seen as an administrative misdemeanor, of a kind that elsewhere in advanced countries would hardly have been noticed. The public prosecutor had to concede not to have found evidence against Ozawa, but the Asahi newspaper (which tends to take the lead in such matters) came with an editorial saying that he was still guilty, and the justice people pulled a never before used trick out of their hats. A few years before they had introduced a law based on an arrangement that had originally been established by McArthur’s occupation of Japan but was hardly ever invoked. It provides for a special council consisting of ordinary citizens with the power to demand mandatory indictment. That the judge did not accommodate the officials who used this utterly transparent trick is very good news for Japan, where more than 99% of cases brought to trial...

...word. How does The Hague compare to that? President Karzai has found himself this time in the midst of a censorious international community. The warlords at the Petersberg conference were permitted to congratulate themselves as “expressing their appreciation to the Afghan mujahideen who, over the years, have defended the independence, territorial integrity and national unity of the country and have played a major role in the struggle against terrorism and oppression, and whose sacrifice has now made them both heroes of jihad and champions of peace, stability and reconstruction of their beloved homeland, Afghanistan.” This week the gentlemen in question were being held responsible, for much of what has gone wrong, for the corruption, the violence, the drug trade and assorted criminality. Even more so than the Taleban who have returned to the front. The switch marks a new approach of hesitant attempts to start talks with the “moderate” Taleban, which appears to signal a recognition that only with the support of the adversary will any chance arise for improvement in this divided and ravaged country. In any case, expectations must be adjusted after The Hague conference. While last year November one could hope for a 180 degree reversal in...

...matters. The other one, America’s Tragedy and the Blind Free World, appeared in Japanese last autumn. It is awaiting publication in the rest of the world. These jottings are not about my personal life, but as George Orwell (and many others) reminded us, general rules are to be broken when the need seems to arise. The lives of my wife and me have been very much enriched by the birth of our son, Sebastian van Wolferen. As any author with children will probably agree, such an experience is infinitely more rewarding than seeing a book published. Here he is, at the age of 55 minutes with his first wink. The Japanese language has an expression, oya baka, for parents who annoy others with news and pictures of their children. I promise to restrain myself on this site. An article published in February 2010 by ChuoKoron On Political Rebirth, Proportion and Power about the sabotage faced by Japan’s new ruling party, and the attempt (successful as it turned out) to get rid of its first cabinet formed by Hatoyama Yukio. An article that appeared in the April and May 2011 issues of Bungei Shunju on The Dangerous Fantasy of American Leadership....

...for the products coming off the newly built and streamlined conveyor belts had sunk to new lows in the early 1990s did bring huge problems, but this was not a familiar tale of corporate and managerial “greed”. No Japanese executives were lining their own pockets. An obvious question is why intelligent economic commentators, even those who spend time in Japan, have appeared oblivious to what I am saying here. An important part of the answer is that Japanese reality does not fit conventional wisdom. The questions prompted by prevailing economic theory do not lead to the necessary insights, and people whom economists residing in Japan report to would not be able to make sense of the anwers prompted by the right questions. Some economic specialists whom I admire may record accurately what Japanese officialdom has done, and still miss crucial points as they do not question the general assumption of mainstream economists that Japanese and American or European incentive structures are the same. So Japanese economic reality, although well recorded in bits and pieces, is not properly observed by most experts. What to make of that? Japan is still the world’s second largest industrial power (if we do not count...

...supreme importance. Competence may mean different things for different people. One very common interpretation of the term is akin to that for professionalism. A combination of one’s education, specialised training, and thorough experience, is brought to the fore as the standard to be applied. Looking at the members of Obama’s cabinet with such a standard in mind, we are likely to conclude that in general terms they’re pretty competent. But I like to measure competence against the task at hand. My dentist is very competent, and he probably knows enough even to help me get over minor ailments: he has had medical training. But then it is time to have my heart checked, or other vital organs, I won’t go to my dentist. He is not competent to do that; in other words, he is not specifically competent. To be sure, certain specific skills can serve you in an adjoining area of activity. At a concert given years ago in Tokyo by a Dutch woodwind ensemble, the musicians delighted the audience as they produced string instruments from under their chairs with which to play an encore, and they brought the house down when together they sang a motet for their...

...get homegrown assessments of what is going on outside their countries. But what is considered news to begin with, if it comes from far away, is first of all almost always predetermined by American editors and correspondents. Al Jazeera TV broadcasts are a wonderful new development, especially because of the much more detailed attention they pay to what is happening in the poorer parts of the world, but selections of these broadcasters, too, tend to follow a beaten path. What Japanese or Koreans learn about European events goes through that same mainly American filter. There are Japanese correspondents based in Brussels, but a lot of what their newspapers consider European news has become news because of American preoccupations. And the same is true again for a majority of European correspondents working on other continents who are not given the time to acclimatize in non-Western political systems. I know this from my experience as a correspondent covering many stories unfoldign in East Asia. In Europe the American-British filter even overlays unfolding reality more than one border away. There exist no European-edited quality broadcast programs and no European newspapers or magazines to give the Danes and the Spaniards and the Rumanians and...