Category: Asia
Japan’s nostalgia for leadership: The 21st-century samurai
MITSUKO SHIMOMURA is an unlikely steward of old-fashioned Japanese values. First, as a woman who was a trail-blazing foreign correspondent in the 1980s, she does not quite fit the samurai mould. Second, with a pink mobile phone and Louis Vuitton handba…
A Singapore cemetery: Brown study
Sikh: for now, ye shall find
THAT it has survived this long is a sort of miracle. In the middle of Singapore, just north of the Pan-Island Expressway, lies 0.9 square km (0.3 square miles) of lush greenery, birdsong, and 80,000-100,0…
China and Nepal: Calling the shots
Defying the security ring
A STRANGE cast of Western tourists, Nepalese pilgrims, Tibetan refugees and Chinese spies is forever circling the great stupa at Boudha in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital. As people walk clockwise around the bu…
Banyan: Pakistan’s saviour?
THOUGH a chill wind gusts through the garden of his hilltop home above Islamabad, Imran Khan, an all-time cricketing great turned politician, is all fired up. When his tiny party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), boycotted the 2008 g…
Taiwan, America and meat wars: Gored
Look Ma, no beef
THOUSANDS of pig farmers throwing dung in the streets of Taipei. Demonstrators marching on America’s informal embassy wearing Uncle Sam hats and leering cow masks. Opposition lawmakers chanting slogans and occupyin…
Myanmar’s last Jews: Burma’s bimah
AMID the bustle and crumbling masonry of downtown Yangon, there is one building that likes to keep up appearances: Myanmar’s only synagogue. On a narrow street, tucked behind a lot of paint shops, stands the splendid Musmeah Yeshu…
Timor-Leste: Small country, big year
THE Timor Plaza in the centre of Dili could probably fit into the basement of many of Asia’s megamalls, but that has not stopped it from becoming an instant landmark. Timor-Leste’s first shopping centre, opened last year by a Ti…
India’s state elections: A welcome slap in the face
IF HE had any other surname, Rahul Gandhi, commonly mentioned as a prime minister-in-waiting, would surely be pondering a new career. His ill-starred record as a political campaigner reached a new low on March 6th, when he accepted …
Banyan: Bleak House
FACING a phalanx of television cameras, Nishrin Jafri Hussain for a moment loses her composure and the tears well up. She is talking in the husk of the house in Ahmedabad, the biggest city in Gujarat, where she grew up, and where he…
Afghanistan’s crisis of trust: Too dangerous to help
Careless fires cause this
THE nationwide protests and violence triggered by the burning of Korans at Bagram airfield more than a week ago have subsided, but the consequences continue. The most serious has been the withdrawal of hundr…
