Details
Schedule:
19:00 - Book launch party Begins
21:00 - Last order
21:30 - Book release party ends
Speakers
Bob Whiting
Ron Drabkin
For this exceptional Delphi event, we return to our old haunt at Delphi member Richard Johns’ Nihonbashi office, where his board room is fitted out with all the latest high-tech gizmos - appropriate for a country manager heading up a thriving “work-tech”, audio-visual technology firm.
Be prepared for some excellent Georgian wines from Brad Schmidt, calorific nibbles designed for absorbing alcohol, and some priceless insights from two very large brains - Bob Whiting and Ron Drabkin.
Bob, a Delphi adviser for many years and much published author, has put out a book consisting of a rogue’s gallery of foreigners stealing, murdering and extorting their way through Tokyo.
Ron, a relative newcomer to the literary scene, has focussed on that favourite villain, the (seemingly) upper-class Englishman who sells his country down the river, while the “little people” do the fighting and the dying. One sees some parallels with the PBI “poor bloody infantry” in Russia and Ukraine, indeed…
Neither of our two speakers is especially political, but in our lunch time conversation, I was assailed by all kinds of ideas regarding the contemporary fashion for disparaging and resisting the “deep state”, or the “Establishment” as it is less colourfully called in the UK.
Reading how the Japanese establishment re-asserted itself after WW2 with copious help from thugs and murderers working for the CIA and its sub-agencies, not to mention an unholy alliance with Korean Moonies, will serve as a stark reminder of the brittleness of the foundation of Japanese governance - as if we needed one, with the murder of PM Abe still fresh in our minds, he whose grandfather PM Kishii, likely war criminal, initiated the alliance with the Korean cult on CIA advice.
In the same vein, reading how Frederick Rutland, a lower-class WW1 war hero, became a spy for the Japanese against America by bluffing his way through Hollywood stars and US military brass, reminds us that our respective elites appear, on balance, to be less trustworthy and less capable or moral judgements than the people they believe they are qualified to lead.
Both books illustrate how foreigners have both cynically exploited Japan - and been exploited in their turn.
One of the early titles of Bob’s book was “Outsiders” and we, who are all outsiders here in some sense, will find much to ponder about hearing the stories of both those who made it, and those who failed, in our adoptive home.
The event will cost ¥5,000 yen per person, to be paid via card or in cash on the day. Receipts will be available.