Peter Tasker

There are some fascinating points in this year’s survey of global wealth, as conducted by the Swiss bank, UBS.

The Economist magazine’s Big Mac index has proved its worth as a guide to real purchasing power, as opposed to the ever-changing numbers in the global currency market.

Combine NISA & BoJ ETFs to magnetise the appeal of domestic investment!

The football world cup is in full swing.

If she were still alive, astrologist and serial entrepreneur Kazuko Hosoki would be happy to learn that she had been featured in the World News section of Britain’s best-selling newspaper, the Sun.

It didn’t look like the kind of place where you would find great treasures of Japanese art.

Published by Japan Forward on April 23 The British Museum’s recent Samurai exhibition turned out to be a disappointment.

Published in Japan Forward February 25 2026 In recent years, the British Museum has curated several excellent Japan-related exhibitions, such as those dedicated to the woodblock masters Hokusai and Hiroshige and shunga (pictorial erotica).

Published in Japan Forward in September 25 2025 It took a long time, but we got there in there in the end.

In the Chinese Zodiac, 2026 is the year of the horse, an animal considered intelligent and responsible, but also somewhat impatient.

“Cracking the Crab: Russian Espionage Against Japan from Peter the Great to Richard Sorge” by James D.J Brown Did a forged document created in the late 1920s influence America’s decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan?

Published in Nikkei Asia on October 2 2o25 What is the connection between shape-shifting rock musician David Bowie and Aritomo Yamagata, often called “the father of Japanese militarism”?

Published in Japan Forward May 24 2025 It really is the end of an era.

It was a typical Gwen evening at one of her favourite restaurants.

Published in Nikkei Asia on April 24 2025 This April marks Shuji Terayama’s ninetieth birthday.

Published in Nikkei Asia February 27 2025 It is hard to imagine the brilliant novelist Yukio Mishima taking a driving test, but he did in 1962, eight years before his sensational ritual suicide.

Published in Japan Forward January 2nd 2025 In Western culture, snakes are malevolent and duplicitous, as attested by the serpent’s role in the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.

Published in Nikkei Asia 14/11/2024 There could hardly be a greater contrast in investment philosophy and personal style than that of Masayoshi Son, CEO of the SoftBank Group, and Warren Buffett, the Sage of Omaha.

Published in Nikkei Asia September 26 During the Pacific War, jazz was banned in Japan because it was considered the enemy’s music.

Published in Japan Forward 2/10 /2024 Richard Nathan is the brains behind the Red Circle imprint which has published short fiction by Japanese authors of the calibre of Kazufumi Shiraishi, Soji Shimada and Kanji Hanawa.

Published in Nikkei Asia August 11 2024 Some countries have more history than others, in the sense of an unbroken record of significant events.

Published in Japan Forward June 27 2o24 In July 2024, a completely new set of Japanese banknotes will go into circulation.

Published in Nikkei Asia 18 May 2024 Sadao Watanabe is a monumental figure in the world of Japanese music.

Published in Japan Forward May 14th 2024 The new Shōgun miniseries streaming on Hulu, Disney and FX appears to have been a tremendous critical and commercial success.

Published in Nikkei Asia on 15/3/2024 I’m sitting in the front row, almost close enough to touch Jimmy Page’s sky blue jacket.

Published in Japan Forward February 23 2024 If the Bank of Japan were a hedge fund, it would be celebrating a bumper performance, now that its huge treasure trove of Japanese equities has soared in value.

Published in Japan Forward January 3rd 2024 Enter the Dragon, a symbol of dynamism, wisdom and strength.

Published in Japan Forward 15/11/2023 According to many respected economists, it is just a matter of time before Asia’s largest, strongest economy overtakes the United States as the world’s number one economic power.

Published by Japan Forward 30/11/2023 The year is 1947 and Godzilla is on the rampage in Tokyo, chewing up train carriages like candy bars.

Published in Nikkei Asia 12/11/2023 Olga V.

Published in Nikkei Asia August 26th This year marks both the 60th anniversary of the death of the great Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu and the 120th anniversary of his birth.

Published in Japan Forward 14/09/2023 The midday sun was hammering down when we joined the 30,000-strong crowd in Toulouse, France’s capital city of rugby.

Published in Japan Forward 14th August 2023 An atom bomb has just been dropped on the city of Hiroshima.

Published in Nikkei Asia July 6th 2023 Ian Buruma has the rare skill of bringing together seemingly disparate characters and events in a way that sheds startling new light on well-worn themes.

Published in Mekong Review February 2023 The title of Chris Miller’s meticulously researched and super-timely book can be taken two different ways.

Published in Japan Forward 20th June 2023 While many countries are fighting inflationary pressures, Japan’s policymakers are attempting to raise them on a sustainable basis.

I’m lucky.

Published in Japan Forward 12/05/2023 “We’re not done investing in Japan yet.”

Published in Japan Forward on May 3rd 2023 Piss and shit rarely feature much in historical dramas, but in the recently released “Okiku and the World” they are crucial to the story.

Published in Nikkei Asia 26/4/2023 “There is nothing–absolutely nothing–half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats,” said our captain, echoing the famous words of the water-rat in Kenneth Graham’s children’s story The Wind in the Willows.

At bottom right, Bob Dylan and his girlfriend Suze Rotolo walk through a snowy landscape created by Hiroshige Ando (1793-1858), one of Japan’s greatest woodblock print masters.

Published in Nikkei Asia 08/04/2023 Ryuichi Sakamoto, who passed away last week, was the best known and most successful Japanese musician in the world.

Published in Japan Forward 3/4/2023 Haruhiko Kuroda, the longest-serving governor of the Bank of Japan in history, will leave his office for the last time this week.

Published in Nikkei Asia 20/ 3/ 2023 It was big news when Japan recently announced that Professor Kazuo Ueda would become the next governor of the Bank of Japan.

Published in Nikkei Asia 8/2/2023 Could videodiscs make a comeback one day, if only for a specialist audience?

Published in Japan Forward 1/2/2023 After watching Tokyo Vice, I had a great idea for a TV series.

Published in Japan Forward 1/1/2023 2022 was a year when jarring shocks started to seem normal.

Published in Nikkei Asia 28/12 /2022 “When you hear music, after it’s over, it’s gone in the air; you can never recapture it again”.

Published in the Mekong Review December 2022 Noted Japanologist and translator Ivan Morris believed that an admiration for doomed heroes ran deep in Japanese culture.

Christmas Day is not even a public holiday in Japan, and less than one percent of the population are Christians.