Lucky Japan with its new imperial era of beautiful harmony. How the Europeans wish they had some of the same elixir. Of course Japan has an unlucky side, too, when it comes to the ravages of nature, with terrible typhoons, tsunamis and earthquakes visiting with seemingly unfair frequency.
But perhaps it is these dreadful visitations that make for the harmony, or at least the unifying resilience of the Japanese people in the face of nature's fearsome challenges. At any rate, the disuniting populist clamor, digitally surcharged, that has paralyzed the United Kingdom (over Brexit but also other issues) and filled the streets of Europe with protest, sometimes verging on violence, and brought politics to the boil of bitterness, seems so far to have bypassed Japanese society.
And populism is not just a European disease. In the United States it has produced an erratic presidency. In the Middle East it has brought unrestrained tribalism and war (now taking a new downward turn in northern Syria). In Iraq, Chile, Venezuela, Lebanon, Hong Kong, Sudan, the mobs are on the streets with increasing frequency. This is indeed, to borrow the heading from one recent Times editorial, "an angry world" that conventional politics seems sadly unable to address.