Month: July 2020

The story of China and Japan, and the periodic efforts to find a modus vivendi. Ezra Vogel’s China and Japan, it is fair to say, is more than just the definitive book on Asia’s two great powers, the relationship between which he describes as ‘tense, dangerous, deep and complicated’. For Vogel, one of the pre-eminent scholars of east Asia for decades, it is very much the product of a life’s work. Vogel speaks and reads Chinese and … Richard McGregor-The Unravelling of Sino-Japanese RelationsRead more

Detail from Body of a Courtesan in Nine Stages of Decomposition, handscroll, Meiji Japan, c.1870s © The Trustees of the British Museum. Art is often used to express how different cultures perceive the inevitability of death and to try to make sense of what happens after we die. With some exceptions, western paintings tend to reflect on the subject’s life, or romanticise and beautify the moment of death to avoid shocking the audience: paintings such … Thomas Clements – Art of the CorpseRead more