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自分が読んで興味深く感じた英文記事を中心に取り上げる予定です
Posted at 2014.02.03 Category : Financial Times
いつもはKindleで週末だけFinancial Timesを購入しています。書店でMeeting Mr Miyake A rare interview with a truly modern design iconと一面で三宅一生さんのインタビューが載っているのを見かけたのに、Kindle版には含まれておらず、FTのサイトでも定期購読者しか読めないようになっていました。 読めないと無性に読みたくなって、昨晩わざわざFTを買いにいってしまいました。なんてことはない別の提携サイトで読めました（汗） Issey Miyake
Issey Miyake’s unique, high-concept approach to design has evolved into a multifaceted, independently owned empire. Mark C O’Flaherty is granted a very rare interview with a truly modern icon 通勤時に読もうと思います。
Posted at 2014.01.25 Category : Financial Times
 紹介しようと思って1週間経ってしまいました（汗）タイトルは釣りっぽいですが、日本の高齢化社会を語るためのベースにすることのできる良記事だと思います。年初に紹介させていただいた本‘Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival’の作者David Pillingさんが書いたもので、この記事は本からの抜粋ではないようです。 David Pilling is the FT’s Asia editor. His book ‘Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival’ is published by Allen Lane. This is not an excerpt.
フィナンシャルタイムズの週末版の付録についていた読み物記事で、日本の高齢化をマクロとミクロの両面から4000語近くを費やして丁寧に取り上げています。 January 17, 2014 10:06 am
How Japan stood up to old age
By David Pilling Twenty-five per cent of Japanese are over 65. But not only do they live longer, they work longer, stay healthier, care for their elderly better – and have found ways to pay for it
マクロというのは、例えば以下のように日本の現状について統計を交えて語ってくれているところです。 If ageing is a disease, then Japan is in the advanced stages. In 1950, only 5 per cent of Japanese were over 65. Today that figure is 25 per cent. With the exception of Monaco, Japan is the world’s oldest society, with a median age of 44. The equivalent figure in the UK is 40, with the US a relatively sprightly 37. At this rate, by 2035, one in three Japanese will be 65 or older.
As the population ages, more than 400 schools are closed down each year, with many converted to care homes or leisure facilities. According to Mayumi Hayashi, a fellow at King’s College London, Japan has the highest provision of day centres for the elderly in the world. Some municipal parks have replaced swings and roundabouts with equipment aimed at elderly fitness. In the countryside, whole communities have been virtually abandoned by youth, leaving older generations to fend for themselves. The oft-repeated tale that the Japanese buy more adult nappies than infant ones is probably not true, though it could soon be on current trends. But it captures our repulsion at the idea of a country with more geriatrics than gurgling babies. Almost subliminally, we think, such a place must offend against nature itself.
ミクロの視点として、東京で働く医師、自転車置き場で働く退職者、大分の田舎で日本語などを教えている高齢者、この3人がクローズアップされています。 Pillingさんは日本が長かったせいか、日本語を交えて記事を書いています。老人ホームでは姨捨山のイメージを紹介したり、「生き甲斐」は“It’s all to do with ikigai,” he said, using a Japanese word that translates as “a reason to live”と使われていました。 Kawahito, the author of a book called I Want to Die at Home, is a proselytiser for the cause of home-based care, which has a long tradition in Japan. The attraction of community care partly arises from a stigma associated with sending family members to nursing homes – institutions that, at least until recently, were regarded as only for those unfortunates who had been abandoned by uncaring relatives. Those sent away were sometimes referred to as “grannies dumped on the mountain”, a reference to an alleged practice in ancient times.
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Shin himself pursues a lifestyle that would exhaust many a younger man. “It’s all to do with ikigai,” he said, using a Japanese word that translates as “a reason to live”, something to keep mind and body active. It’s become fashionable, he said, to talk about something called pinpin korori, a brutal but almost comic way of describing an active life followed by sudden death. “Drop down dead,” he laughed. “That’s a good way of saving on medical bills.” Then he paused to reflect. “After all, we don’t want to be a burden on the youngsters.”
日本についての記事は統計的な情報による概略を学べたり、自分が知らなかったエピソードを知ることができるのでとてもためになりますね。
Posted at 2014.01.22 Category : Financial Times
peace in our timeという言葉は、英国チェンバレン首相のミュンヘン宥和政策を想起させることは何度かこのブログでも取り上げてきました。このフレーズはWikipedia にIt is primarily remembered for its ironic valueとあるようにむしろ反対の意味で皮肉的に使われることが多いようです。 （Wikipedia） The phrase "Peace for Our Time" was spoken on 30 September 1938 by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in his speech concerning the Munich Agreement and the Anglo-German Declaration.[1] The phrase echoed Benjamin Disraeli, who upon returning from the Congress of Berlin in 1878 stated "I have returned from Germany with peace for our time." It is primarily remembered for its ironic value: less than a year after the agreement, following continued aggression from Germany and its invasion of Poland, Europe was plunged into World War II.
It is often misquoted as "peace in our time", which had appeared long before in The Book of Common Prayer as "Give peace in our time, O Lord", probably based on the 7th-century hymn 'Da pacem Domine! in diebus nostris, Alleluja'.[2] It is unknown how deliberate Chamberlain's use of such a similar term was, but anyone of his background would have been familiar with the original.
peace in our timeという言葉を皮肉的な意味ではなく、あえて文字通りの意味で使っているエッセイがありました。意外性をもたせることは読者の注意を引くためのテクニックの一つといえそうです。 January 17, 2014 12:00 pm Peace in our time
Simon KuperBy Simon Kuper
‘They’d have stopped the first world war fast if soldiers had live-tweeted the carnage’
上記のフィナンシャルタイムズのエッセイは以前このブログでも紹介させていただいたエッセイを受けて別のコラムニストが書いたもののようです。 第1次世界大戦の教訓を忘れるな
目を向けるべきは「ミュンヘン」より「サラエボ」
2014.01.08（水） Financial Times When war broke out in August 1914, crowds in Trafalgar Square cheered. In Germany, even the liberal novelist Thomas Mann exulted, “War! We felt a cleansing, a liberation.” The “world of peace” had bored him.
His words show how far we have come since. Most recent commentaries about 1914 emphasise current risks of war. Yet today’s overriding reality is peace – more widespread internationally and domestically than probably ever before. Armed conflict and violent crime are declining, as the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker describes in his seminal The Better Angels of Our Nature. What if trends are towards even more peace?
このエッセイでは、現代は平和な時代と主張している学者としてSteven Pinkerに触れています。 Pinkerは昨年の英検1級の第一回試験で出題されていましたね。世界は平和になっているという主張をpeace in our timeという表現で、「つかの間の平和」という意味ではなく文字通りに「我々の時代の平和」という意味で使っているのです。 その後でThe notion that we live in peaceful times is counter-intuitive.と今の時代は平和だということは2001年の同時多発テロを体験した我々にとってはすぐには受け入れられないことかもしれないといいながら、平和といえる具体例を以下のようにあげています。このような具体例の書き方も参考になりますね。 Yet these are exceptions. The estimated 73,455 Syrians killed in 2013 represent more than half the world’s deaths in armed conflict last year. Pinker says that annual deaths in battle dropped by over 90 per cent from the late 1940s through the early 2000s.
Just since the 1990s, various trends have been pushing us further towards peace. On average, humans have been getting more educated, rich and internationally connected, and more likely to live in democracies. These factors would tend to reduce violence. Indeed, by some definitions, there have been no interstate wars since 2008. Meanwhile, homicides have dropped across the western world, with US murder rates down to 1960s levels.
こういうインプリケーションを読み込めることが読解力と言えるかもしれませんね。英検問題をしっかり復習するようにすれば、このようなフィナンシャルタイムズのエッセイも楽しめるようになるので、「試験か、本物の英語か」という議論は英検１級の勉強に関しては的外れなものとなりそうです。
Posted at 2014.01.13 Category : Financial Times
どんな場面に置いても我々は「毅然とした態度をとる」ことがどうしてもかっこいいと思ってしまいますが、そのような考え方について再考を求めるエッセイがありました。 Time to think more about Sarajevo, less about MunichAs in the years before 1914 — when a rising Germany confronted its neighbours — a rising China now is in dispute with several Asian nations By Gideon Rachman January 7, 2014 第1次世界大戦の教訓を忘れるな目を向けるべきは「ミュンヘン」より「サラエボ」 2014.01.08（水） Financial Times Can thinking about the past improve the way you handle the present? If so, this year’s centenary of the outbreak of the First World War could do the world a great service by persuading modern politicians to spend more time thinking about Sarajevo — and less time worrying about Munich.
過去について考えることで現在への対処の仕方が改善されるということはあり得るのだろうか？ もしあり得るのなら、今年が第1次世界大戦の勃発から100年目に当たることは、現代の政治家たちがミュンヘンを心配する時間を減らしてサラエボについて考える時間を増やすよう促し、ひいては今日の世界に大きく貢献してくれるかもしれない。
“Sarajevo” and “Munich” are, of course, shorthand for the diplomatic crises that preceded the outbreaks of the First and Second World Wars. Yet, the two events have been used to support very different approaches to international affairs. If leaders warn against “another Munich”, they are almost always advocating a tough response to aggression — usually military action. If they speak of “Sarajevo”, however, they are warning against a drift to war.
もちろん「サラエボ」と「ミュンヘン」は、第1次世界大戦および第2次世界大戦の勃発前に起こった外交危機の略称だ。ところがこの2つの事件は、国際問題への対応策を論じる際に、大きく異なるアプローチを擁護する材料として使われてきた。
大きく異なる2つのアプローチ
政治指導者が「ミュンヘン」を繰り返してはならないと警告する時、それは攻撃的な姿勢への強硬な対応――大抵は軍事行動――を支持する場合がほとんどだ。だが「サラエボ」を引き合いに出す時は、戦争にずるずると引き込まれてはならないと警告する場合なのだ。
The British and the French are generally believed to have made a terrible mistake, which led to a wider war, by failing to confront Hitler during the Munich crisis of 1938. By contrast, most historians look back at the events provoked by the assassination of an Austrian archduke in Sarajevo in the summer of 1914 and are horrified by how heedlessly Europe slipped into war. Margaret Macmillan, author of a compelling new account of the outbreak of conflict, The War that Ended Peace, laments that — “none of the key players in 1914 were great and imaginative leaders who had the courage to stand out against the pressures building for war”.
1938年のミュンヘン危機については、英国とフランスがヒトラーと対決しないというとんでもない間違いを犯した、おかげでもっと大規模な戦争につながってしまったとの見方が定説になっている。
一方、1914年夏にサラエボで起こったオーストリアの大公の暗殺については、大半の歴史家がその後の展開を振り返り、欧州が実に無思慮に戦争に突入していったことに恐れおののいている。
例えば、第1次世界大戦の勃発を取り上げた説得力のある新著『The War that Ended Peace（平和に終止符を打った戦争）』を発表したマーガレット・マクミラン氏は「1914年当時の重要人物の中には、戦争に踏み切れという圧力の前に立ちはだかる勇気を持った、偉大で想像力に富んだ指導者が1人もいなかった」と嘆いている。
ミュンヘン＝チェンバレン＝宥和政策というのは以前のブログで紹介させていただきました。Peace in our timeのスピーチです。 （オックスフォード） Neville Chamberlain
(1869–1940)
a British Conservative prime minister (1937–40) and son of Joseph Chamberlain. He is mainly remembered for his policy of appeasement. He signed the Munich Agreement in 1938, trying to avoid a war against Germany and Italy, but said that Britain would defend Poland if Germany attacked it. This led to the start of World War II. He left the government soon after Britain entered the war, when British forces were defeated in Norway.
This is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.
Neville Chamberlain, September 1938
今回のフィナンシャルタイムズの主張は以下のようにまとめられます。このようなインプリケーションは意味を取る上で大切ですので、慣れておきたいですね。開戦派はミュンヘンしか引き合いに出さないでしょうが。。。 サラエボ＝第一次世界大戦＝開戦をとどまるべき ミュンヘン＝第二次世界大戦＝開戦すべき どうやらこの構図は結構反復されているようで、2003年のイラク開戦前や2008年のイランとの緊張時でも同じ構図で慎重な対応を要求していました。 サラエボの教訓については、以下のコラムでThe lesson of Sarajevo is that war has a host of consequences that no one can foresee.と簡潔にまとめてくれています。誰もがすぐに終るだろうと思って開戦してみたら未曾有の損害を出す結果になってしまったのが第一次世界大戦と捉えています。 Sarajevo, not Munich
By Arthur J. Greif, Special to the BDN
This story was published on March 05, 2003 on Page A9 in all editions of the Bangor Daily News
This “war at any price” mentality of Bush does have a 20th-century analogue: the reaction of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, by terrorists seeking to promote a greater Serbia. Wounded by the loss of a much-loved heir to the empire’s throne, Austria, with Germany’s support, forwarded a list of stringent demands upon Serbia that no nation could have agreed to in its entirety. Serbia conceded much of what Austria demanded. Austria invaded anyway and, despite punishing Serbia, it set loose a cascade of events that led to a destruction from which Europe did not fully recover for more than 70 years. Millions of the world’s best young men died in trench warfare; chemical weapons were used repeatedly for the first time; a war that the United States later joined to “make the world safe for democracy” made it safe for the rise of fascism, Nazism and communism.
The lesson of Sarajevo is that war has a host of consequences that no one can foresee. When a weaker adversary repeatedly accedes to most of your demands, think twice before insisting upon 100 percent capitulation. The risks of war will far outweigh the benefits. We should shudder at what the winds of war will set loose both in the Islamic world and in a Western world beset by terrorism whose numbers of recruits will have doubled.
こちらは2008年のものです。 Look to Sarajevo, Not MunichBy Marcus Alexander Gadson | Sunday, June 8, 2008 My larger problem is that too many conservatives want to make every foreign policy issue into 1938 at Munich. Any leader who talks tough and rattles his saber becomes Winston Churchill. Any adversary becomes Adolf Hitler. And everyone who urges any sort of diplomacy is suddenly Neville Chamberlain. But the foreign policy challenges we face today are much more reminiscent of the years before World War One than they are of the years before World War Two.
Prior to the First World War, there were many great world powers. Britain, France, Germany, and Russia all jockeyed for global hegemony and influence. As militarism and nationalism dominated the European continent, career diplomats knew that the slightest misstep could lead to war. That misstep came on June 28, 1914, when Gavrilo Princip shot the archduke of Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand. This triggered a now infamous chain of events. Austria-Hungary, backed by Germany, issued an extreme ultimatum which the Serbs rejected. Austria-Hungary promptly declared war. Russia rushed to the defense of Serbia, and Germany declared war on Russia. France and Britain were rapidly brought into the war.
The First World War would last for over four years and leave millions dead. Indirectly, it also caused the Second World War, which left millions more dead. If anything, this demonstrates the paramount importance of active diplomacy. What if European powers had engaged in more diplomacy, instead of going to war as a knee-jerk reaction? Foreign policy hawks don’t want to cause world chaos, but it is instructive for them—and for us—to remember that our actions can have dramatic consequences.
別にフィナンシャルタイムズのコラムに対してありきたりの構図を用いたと批判したいのではありません。やはりタイムリーなものだと思います。 In 1914, national leaders were so keen to appear strong and to protect their honour (or “credibility” as they would call it nowadays), that they were unable to step back from the brink of conflict. Reflection on the Sarajevo crisis may just prevent today’s leaders from falling into the same trap, if Sino-Japanese tensions heighten again. But, unfortunately, many of today’s political players still approach their rivalries with a Munich mindset. Neither Japan nor China is prepared to look “weak” by backing off in the East China Sea. The US is also worried that its “credibility” will be damaged, if it fails to show toughness. A prominent official in the Barack Obama administration explained to me last year that — while he understood Chinese objections to US naval patrols near China’s coast — America could not cut back these patrols because that would be seen as weakness.
1914年には、各国の指導者は強く見られること、そして自分の名誉（最近では「信頼性」と呼ばれるもの）を守ることに熱心なあまり、紛争の瀬戸際から退くことができなかった。日中間の緊張が再び高まった場合、サラエボ危機の考察はもしかしたら、現在の指導者たちが同じ罠に陥るのを防げるかもしれない。
だが、残念なことに、今の政界関係者の多くはまだ、ミュンヘン的なものの考え方をもって対立関係に取り組んでいる。日本も中国も、東シナ海で後退することで「弱く」見られる気はない。
米国もまた、タフさを示せなければ自国の「信頼性」が傷つくことを心配している。オバマ政権のある著名な高官は昨年筆者に、中国の海岸近辺での米国海軍の巡視活動に対する中国の反発は理解しているが、弱さと見られてしまうために、米国はこうした巡視活動を減らせないのだと説明してくれた。
This is the kind of playground logic that four-year-old children are encouraged to grow out of. But, unfortunately, it still seems to be the dominant mode of thinking in international affairs.
国際問題を支配する遊び場の論理
これは、4歳児が子供じみたことはもうやめろと促される類の遊び場の論理だ。しかし、残念なことに、国際問題では今もこれが思考の基本モードのようだ。
The Munich mindset is so entrenched that a real intellectual shift will be required to change it. The many commemorations of the First World War that will take place this year may just serve that purpose — by influencing world leaders to take a less dangerously macho approach to their rivalries. With tensions rising in East Asia and conflict spreading in the Middle East, the 100th anniversary of the Great War comes at an important time. Let’s hope it does some good.
ミュンヘン的なものの考え方はあまりに深く染み付いているため、これを変えるには本格的な思考の転換が必要だ。今年行われる数々の第1次世界大戦記念式典は、他国との対立関係に取り組む際に危険なまでにマッチョな態度を取らないよう世界の指導者たちに影響を与えることで、その目的を果たせるかもしれない。
東アジアで緊張が高まり、中東で紛争が広がるなか、第1次世界大戦の100周年記念は重要な時期に訪れた。これが何がしかの貢献を果たすことを期待しよう。
まあといっても「歴史の教訓」とありがたがるのは危険な感じもします。ベニスの商人の言葉ではないですが、歴史だって自己の目的で使えますから。。。 悪魔は目的のためには聖書でも引用する The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
Posted at 2013.12.15 Category : Financial Times
今週末のフィナンシャルタイムズはWomen of 2013という特集を組んで今年活躍された女性を紹介していました。Malala Yousafzaiさんが巻頭インタビューでAera EnglishでおなじみだったFTのアジア編集長David Pillingさんが相手をしています。 December 12, 2013 10:45 pm Malala Yousafzai
By David Pilling The Pakistani schoolgirl shot by the Taliban has astonished the world with her courage and determination to fight for education and equal rights for women 何人もの女性が選ばれていますが、その中にSamantha Powerさんもいらっしゃいました。Kindle版ではPersuasive Powerという記事タイトルになっています。文字通り「説得力」という意味ですが、Persuasive Power（説得力のあるパワーさん）という周囲を説得させてうまく物事を進めているSamantha Powerさんを好意的に評価しているのでしょう。 December 12, 2013 10:45 pm Samantha PowerBy Geoff Dyer This year, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former war reporter became the youngest person to hold the role of US ambassador to the United Nations この記事は、Samantha Powerさんの生い立ちから現在の活動までを丁寧に説明している1700字程度の長めの記事です。理想を押し付けるだけでなく、理想を実現していく実務能力も評価しています。同じようにシリアへの介入は積極的ですがが、単なるリベラルな武力介入積極派Liberal hawkというわけでもないという現実的な面もあるようです。 She was one of the White House officials who persuaded Obama to intervene in Libya – against the advice of his secretary of defence Robert Gates – when Muammer Gaddafi’s forces were threatening a massacre in Benghazi. She was the driving force behind the creation of Obama’s Atrocities Prevention Board, designed to provide warnings about looming threats. Tommy Vietor, who worked with Power in both Senator Obama’s office and the White House, says she was an effective bureaucratic operator.
“People think of her as a moral conscience, which is true,” he says. “But they forget she also spent a lot of time studying how governments respond to this type of crisis. She knows the system well.”
英語学習的に面白い表現を紹介します。If A Problem From Hell made her career, it is also a cross Power has to bearと「十字架を背負う」というイディオムがそのまま使われていますね。 If A Problem From Hell made her career, it is also a cross Power has to bear, a series of stark judgments against which to assess her performance now. In the book she argues that in the face of mass atrocities, “American leaders did not act because they did not want to”. Perhaps the most famous passage concerns the genocide in Rwanda and the reaction of Susan Rice, then a White House official and now Obama’s national security adviser (and Power’s predecessor at the UN). “I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required,” Rice told Power.“poster child for the ‘lean-in’ generation”として記事で取り上げられていたPoliticoのイベント動画がありました。本当にネット社会は便利ですよね。
These days Power juggles a very different set of challenges, mixing her job at the UN with the demands of two young children, Declan, four, and Rían, who is not quite two. Speaking in November at an event in Washington organised by Politico magazine, she blushed at being described as a “poster child for the ‘lean-in’ generation”. Power replied: “I am happy if I can read them their story before bed without screwing up the negotiation the next day.”
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