Emi Kawaguchi Mann reflects on the world’s transformation since the Cold War after moving to Germany in 1982, highlighting Masayuki Takayama’s unique analytical brilliance and today’s global instability.

I moved to Germany in 1982.
2016-12-29
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The column “Henken Jizai,” which Masayuki Takayama has been serializing for many years in Shukan Shincho, is one of my favorite columns.
Beyond his reporting ability, his skill in combining events occurring in different parts of the world, and on entirely different time axes, which at first glance appear unrelated, and then extracting their common threads, is extraordinary.
Histories unknown to ordinary people appear one after another.
He mercilessly ridicules great powers and grown-ups alike, yet there is always a sense of humor that leaves no bitter aftertaste.
Moreover, he does not wave morality around like a cudgel.
This sense cannot be imitated by anyone.
That is why, when he once wrote an anonymous column for a certain magazine, readers immediately pictured Takayama’s face upon reading it, and it never truly remained anonymous.
I am therefore delighted to have had the opportunity to engage in a dialogue with him.
I moved to Germany in 1982.
It was the height of the Cold War, with the United States and the Soviet Union confronting each other.
Japan was being bashed as an overreaching “economic superpower,” while China was merely an Asian “poverty-stricken giant.”
How astonishingly things have changed over these thirty-plus years.
Today, the world has entered an era of upheaval.
The European Union, built upon lofty ideals, is on the verge of disintegration, and whether in the Middle East or along the EU’s eastern frontier, war could break out at any moment.
Behind the scenes, although somewhat frayed, the United States and Russia still firmly pull the strings.
Asia, of course, is also unstable.
Amid such turmoil, only the Japanese seem carefree, watching the Olympics.
This book took on the grand theme of “Which countries—Japan, the United States, or Germany—will survive ten years from now?”
Whether it proves accurate or not, I would like to fully exercise my imagination by borrowing Takayama’s perspective.
In any case, I secretly believe that my current stance of questioning everything has, without my realizing it, been influenced in no small part by him.
September 2016.
On a clear autumn day in Stuttgart.
Emi Kawaguchi Mann