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Shigeru Ishiba will be the next prime minister of Japan (ABC News). I’ll admit that as a fellow Millennial, I was hopeful that 43-year-old Shinjirō Koizumi would emerge victorious, however unlikely that would be in a country with the 3rd highest median age in the world (Wikipedia).
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I’ve been a longtime reader of Tobias Harris and I thought he wrote the best backgrounder on Ishiba and the intellectual tradition from which he descends. This post also introduces a ‘bureaucratism’/‘idealism’ duality I hadn’t heard before. I’ve long been fascinated that Japanese politics isn’t oriented around a contest between labour and capital but that raises the obvious question of which contest it is organised around. This framework provides a possible answer.
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While I’m on the topic of Japan, Leo Lewis wrote a lovely essay for the Financial Times about the shinkansen. It’s unfortunately paywalled but I liked it so much, I’m linking to it regardless. This link might work for those who are not subscribers.
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On Saturday, I took Emma and John to see Transformers One. As an adult, I didn’t think it was particularly great but it had its moments and more than anything else, I appreciated that the filmmakers targeted children as the primary audience rather than nostalgic adults. As someone whose father took them to see a Transformers movie about Optimus Prime as a five-year-old (I think?), I also appreciated the historical resonance of taking my seven-year-old son to see a Transformers movie about Optimus Prime.
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I’ve been somewhat successful in getting Eri to take over my Series 5 Apple Watch but that meant giving her my charger which in turn prompted me to buy a ‘power stand’ or whatever you want to call something that can charge my phone, watch and AirPods (the Anker MagGo Wireless Charging Station). Unfortunately, the limited desk space I have means that this has hidden my phone behind my monitor but perhaps the rumoured smaller Mac Mini coming next month might solve that problem?
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Only Murders in the Building continues to be great and I forgot to mention last week that Slow Horses is also back. I was a little disappointed when I remembered that it’s only six episodes per series which means I’m already halfway through that one. Fortunately, Law & Order is back on Friday for season 24!
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I haven’t watched anything on YouTube that’s really grabbed me in the past week. Perhaps this is why I’ve found myself going back to Sarah Wilson’s (AKA PushingUpRoses’s) ‘That Time on Murder, She Wrote’. In this series, Wilson recaps episodes of the Angela Lansbury-starring murder-mystery television show that ran from 1984 to 1996 (?!). If you didn’t grow up watching the TV show, I’m not sure Wilson’s videos will be that interesting but if you’re curious, the best place to start is with her first one.
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Way back in Weeknotes #2 (!), I recommended Fazil Say’s ten-hour rendition of all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. Almost five years later and here I am recommending Say again. This time it’s the much more manageable Oiseaux tristes: Couperin, Debussy & Ravel (Apple Music), a mere 59-minute selection of piano pieces from three French composers.
