Old World, New World

And the timeless art of laughing out our so-called masters...

(Painting by Tsukioka Kogyo for Boshibari, from the series “Fifty Kyogen Plays.”)

“Though the master may be a fearsome being, before sake he is powerless.”

~ Line from the traditional Japanese satire, Tied to a Pole

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Kyoto, Japan...

Sometimes the End of the World can feel a bit like the Beginning of the World... so old, so different, as though it belongs to another time altogether.

There is much we do not understand about Japan’s rich and fascinating culture. Last night, amidst the dimly lit laneways of her ancient capital, we added half a dozen more “items of incomprehension” to the growing list.

More on our “lost in translation” moments in a second...

Radical Freedom

But first, let us cast an eye across the ocean to a more familiar landscape where, down in Argentina, Javier Milei’s radical, free market experiment continues apace. The latest, from The Buenos Aires Times:

Economic activity in Argentina rose 4.4% in 2025 year-on-year, reports INDEC

Economic activity in Argentina rose 4.4 percent in 2025 year-on-year, the INDEC national statistics bureau revealed on Tuesday. December capped off an improved economic year for President Javier Milei’s government with further growth, consolidating the rebound.

[...]

President Javier Milei hailed the annual figure, declaring on social media that “Argentina is moving forward.”

“The prophets of chaos are not going to like this,” he said, claiming that growth would have been seven percent if it were not for the fear of the opposition returning to power.

If Argentina were an OECD country (it is still awaiting “accession”), it would be the fastest growing economy in the group. In the so-called “developed” world, growth is significantly lower.

At 2.2%, Mr. Trump’s Big Beautiful Economy is growing at just half Argentina’s rate. In sclerotic Europe, the average is half again, around 1.1%.

Here in Japan, meanwhile, anything above a whole number is considered something of a minor miracle. This year, growth in the Land of the Rising Sun is projected to reach 0.7-1.0%.

False Stimulus

Figures don’t lie, as Mark Twain once observed, though liars often figure. So while GDP tells part of the story (the “seen”), it keeps most of its cards behind its back (the “unseen”). That is, much of the “growth” in developed nations comes not from productive gains and innovation in the private sector, but from layering on the government lard thick and plenty.

Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, which followed Trump’s $2.2 trillion CARES Act, hobbles to mind... or the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act... or the ludicrously named Inflation Reduction Act, for another $1.1 trillion (because, as every PhD economist worth his scrip knows, nothing helps bring down inflation quite like government sending people checks in the mail!)

Public works boondoggles, bulging military budgets, bridges to nowhere... it’s all part of Big Government doing what Big Government does worst: spending other people’s money.

In Argentina, meanwhile, world beating growth is flourishing not in the ossified public sector, where some ~61,700 government jobs have been axed since Milei came to power just a couple of years ago, but in the private sector, where, according to INDEC, the economy added 326,000 net jobs last year alone.

Of course, this is not rocket surgery, as Sr. Milei explained to the gaping elitist maws at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos last month:

“Free-market capitalism is the only system that is fair, efficient, and the one that generates the highest growth rate.”

That free markets are superior to the various alternatives – all of which advocate for some form of state-sponsored coercion... and all of which end in tyranny of the elites and misery for the masses – is something that can be observed throughout history. It is, in other words, a knowable fact... which is more than can be said for much of what we experience here, in this weird and wonderful End of the World.

Tied to a Pole

We’re exploring Japan’s ancient city of Kyoto, which served as the capital from 794 to 1868, a mere 1,074 years. (The word Kyo–to actually means “capital city,” while the morphemically reversed To–kyo means “eastern capital.”)

With over 1,600 Buddhist temples and about 400 Shinto shrines, Kyoto is a kind of spiritual home of Japanese culture. It is also the Geisha capital (or Geiko in Kyoto dialect), so it is not unusual to see women in striking silk kimonos click-clacking up and down the smoothed stone streets and laneways in their wooden sandals.

Last night, we wandered into Kyoto’s popular Gion district for some cultural appreciation. Dear wifey had surprised us with tickets to a small theater, which offers a curated selection of traditional arts for westerners to observe in polite but generally confused appreciation.

Over an hour or so, in elegant settings, we witnessed a traditional dance known as kyo-mai performed by a pair of maiko (apprentice Geishas), heard the plangent sounds of koto music, played on a pair of stringed instruments that looked a bit like Indian sitars, watched an ikebana (flower arrangement), said to emphasize aesthetic training and promote harmony with nature, and tried to make sense of a Bugaku, an ancient court dance involving a slow moving costumed warrior, said to be one of the oldest continuously performed arts in the world.

But of all the performances, we most enjoyed the kyogen, a satirical comedy titled Boshibari (“Tied to a Pole”) in which a couple of crafty servants tricked their cruel but hapless master out of all his sake.

Focusing on everyday people, rather than their gods and overlords, traditional kyogen is something akin to Japan’s answer to Aristophanes. Developed in the 14th century, the playful comedy shows that in worlds old and new, in lands west and east, when it comes to laughing at self-appointed elites, a little irreverence goes a long way.

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

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