Archive

Writing

The complete archive, in both languages, newest first. Essays on language, culture, leadership and judgment — and on what survives the crossing between them.

Pink plastic trays heaped with thousands of silver pachinko balls, stacked on the floor of a parlour.
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What Min Jin Lee Had to Unlearn to Write Pachinko

Michael Faraday lecturing at the Royal Institution, London
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When People Step inside – Teaching the People Who Keep the Economy Moving

Close-up of a fountain pen nib
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What Makes a Pen Good for Me

Johannes Vermeer, “The Art of Painting” (c. 1666–68)
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The Work Behind the Work

Rembrandt, “Aristotle with a Bust of Homer” (1653)
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When the Gods Stopped Speaking, Judgment Began

The Burning of the Library of Alexandria, 19th-century illustration
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What Is Lost When Millions of Books Burn?

Edo-period print of children learning to read and write (1790)
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Why Did Japan Separate Literature from Logic?

Caravaggio, “The Cardsharps” (c. 1594)
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A Great Story Is One Someone Will Defend

Jean Miélot, scribe and translator, at his writing desk (15th century)
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In the Age of Perfect AI Writing, Process Becomes the Product

Page from Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester, written in mirror script
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A Writer May Soon Need to Keep Receipts for a Voice

Hubert Robert, Imaginary View of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre in Ruins, 1796
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What Survives Across Civilizations May Be True

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Soichiro Honda Is Not History. He Is a Builder’s Method.

Caravaggio, The Incredulity of Saint Thomas: Thomas reaches to touch the wound to believe
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What Does It Mean to Trust a Human Being?

Herbert James Draper, “Ulysses and the Sirens” (1909)
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The Odyssey: The Oldest Story Was Never About Monsters, It’s About Us.

The coastline of Santo Antão, Cabo Verde
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The World Still Moves from the Margins

Philipp Foltz, The Funeral Oration of Pericles
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Why Democracy Must Deliver, Not Just Preach

A game of Go in progress on a wooden board
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What Game Are You Playing?

Thomas Eakins, “The Gross Clinic” (1875)
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When AI Learns from the Irreplaceable

The Kanrin Maru, the first Japanese steamship to cross the Pacific (c. 1860)
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The Samurai Who Refused to Become a Prisoner of His Own Ideas

Ise Grand Shrine, Mie Prefecture
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Inherited Drafts

Dejima, the Dutch trading post in Nagasaki harbour (1814)
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Japan’s Long Experiment in Domestic Depth

Okumura Masanobu, “A Stylish Tsurezuregusa” (late 1710s)
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You Can Outsource the Job. But You Cannot Outsource the Learning.

An express train on Taiwan’s western line, c. 1930
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The Lightness of Serious Literature

Portrait of King Wen of Zhou, traditional Chinese court painting (19th–early 20th century reproduction, artist unknown)
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Management Did Not Originally Mean Making Money

Grattan Bridge on the River Liffey, Dublin
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If You Don’t Bring Forth What Is Within You, It Will Destroy You

Caravaggio, The Inspiration of Saint Matthew: an angel counts on his fingers above the evangelist, who looks up, pen in hand
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Even Gods Needed Writers

Emanuel Leutze, “Washington Crossing the Delaware” (1851)
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The Future Belongs to Leaders Who Understand Human Nature

Taylor Swift, The Eras Tour (Lover set), 2023
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Taylor Swift Is a Mirrorball

Jay-Z in concert, 2009
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“It’s Like Air” from Jay-Z interview

Senate House, University of London
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When Language Thins, Feeling Thins With It

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Kasuga Moon, from One Hundred Aspects of the Moon
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Kenkō and the Unfinished Moon

Natsume Sōseki in his study, 1915
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Perhaps I Am Continuing What Soseki Began

Engraving after Raphael’s Assembly of the Gods, Loggia di Psiche, Villa Farnesina
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Is AI the New God?

The Tenshō embassy: Japanese envoys received by Pope Gregory XIII (1585)
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The 440-Year-Old Content Strategy That Still Works Today

View over the Sumida River, Tokyo
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I Never Stopped Being a Foreigner

The Roman Baths in Bath, England
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Tolerance Begins in the Sauna

Emily Dickinson’s manuscript of “Wild nights – Wild nights!”
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Nobody Asked You To Do This

Equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, Rome
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How to Think Clearly When the World Is Falling Apart

The rock garden at Ryōan-ji, Kyoto
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善処(zensho) — Do What Can Be Done

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Winning, losing, escaping, we are all rats all the way through.

Bomb damage in Tokyo, 1945
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How Nations Rise From Ruins

Koboto Santaro, a Japanese commander in armour, in a hand-coloured photograph by Felice Beato, c. 1868
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Two Traditions, One Wisdom — And the Gap Between Them

Uchida Hyakken
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Japan’s Greatest Essays Were Written Out of Boredom

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When the Limits Come Into Focus, Life Finally Becomes Readable

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At the Queen’s Table

Utagawa Hiroshige, Sumida River, the Suijin Shrine and Massaki, 1856
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Who Rules Whom? Kenkō’s Answer to Power

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When AI Writes Better Than We Do: What a 14th-Century Monk Taught Me About Thinking

W. E. F. Britten, The Lady of Shalott, illustration for Tennyson, 1901
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Why Do We Keep Watching Stories of Loss?

Dwight D. Eisenhower and Winston Churchill, 1950s
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When Sermons Meet Invoices: Why the Atlantic Alliance Is Dying (and What Replaces It)

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Happiness Is Not What We Gain — It’s What the Brain Learns to Quiet

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The Vatican Bank: God’s Money and the Men Who Played With Fire

Kitagawa Utamaro - Woman Reading a Letter (from the series Seven Episodes in the Life of Komac - 1943.23 - Cleveland Museum of Art
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Why are Japanese novels exploding in the UK and US right now? How Japan’s “Ice Age” Women Writers Became Global

James McNeill Whistler - Nocturne en bleu et or
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What a Former MI6 Chief Taught Me About Leadership, Ethics, and Living in a Disorderly World

Construction of the Berlin Wall, 20 November 1961
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The Ghosts of John le Carré in the Age of AI Espionage

After the Bath, Woman drying herself - Edgar Degas - National Gallery
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The Quiet Revolution of The Booker Prize winner of 2025, “Flesh”

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When Work Teaches Us: Rethinking Growth in the Age of AI

The boardwalk at Brighton Beach, Brooklyn
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Anora – a fractured fairy tale that promises fireworks, but delivers a flicker

Utagawa Hiroshige, Night View of Saruwaka-machi, from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, 1856
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Tokyo, the Invisible City of History — Where Samurai Whispers Still Echo Between Skyscrapers

The Ass at School MET DP818318
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Your Degree Won’t Save You. Here’s What Will.

La ronda de noche, por Rembrandt van Rijn
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Why McKinsey Won’t Teach You to Lead

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