Turning Japanese

The Insider has been following recent events in Japan with a heavy heart, as I was there in 2008 and found the country and the people delightful.

I had not been sure what to expect. While I still like to think of myself as a young (well, young at heart) woman, the fact is I was born just over two decades after the end of World War II and growing up encountered some stories about the Japanese that left me without any feel good factor whatsoever. There was the colleague of my father’s who, when Honda were thinking of joining forces with British Leyland and turned up en masse to inspect the plant, had to take a day’s leave because he could not bear to be in the same building. My father explained that this man had been in Changi gaol in Singapore; when this made no impression on me he gave me a copy of Russell Braddon’s autobiography The Naked Island, which