Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the world, more and more consumers are shunning the potential dangers of brick-and-mortar stores in favor of their online alternatives. Major e-commerce platforms, along with their counterparts peddling everything from inter-personal communication to insurance products, have become the primary beneficiaries of the pandemic era. Yet, as their market values hit one record high after another, the global world of "big tech" is also facing unprecedented scrutiny as governments around the world finally begin to grasp and rein in their influence.

It is no longer news that Japan's provincial areas are facing a steep long-term decline , as the country's overall population decreases and ever-more opportunities for work and high living standards become concentrated in Tokyo. As provincial areas face a steady decline in population, the local tax base, proportional to the declining number of people and businesses that make the locality their permanent home, is also declining in tandem. With the same areas facing ballooning costs from pensions and healthcare as the population ages, the fiscal shortfall threatens to break the fragile balance of payments for the local governments.

"Digital transformation" has become a hot trend in the non-IT business world in the past few years. As a slew of software firms come to maturity peddling productivity-enhancing programs for more legacy firms, the legacy firms have come to grips with a renewed sense of crisis that they need to adopt more IT in their day-to-day operations just to keep up with tech firms that can achieve so much value with relatively few employees. The idea of using the tech firms' own products to help retool the likes of manufacturers and traditional brick-and-mortar service operators is becoming not just mainstream but urgent as they adapt to the work-from-home world of COVID-19.

Recently, Nike released a short advertisement on Youtube that depicts three Japanese young athletes of non-mainstream ethnic identities (two Korean, one half-black) overcoming discrimination and bullying through their participation in their schools' and communities' soccer teams. Despite the intention of crafting a universal message of social inclusion in a country grasping an unprecedented question of what to make of an increase in Japanese residents of non-Japanese descent. The ad was picked up by international media outlets as a sign of the country's continued reorientation from centuries of self-designated ethnic and cultural homogeneity.

For many Japanese people, the first and probably the most common type of "foreign food" that they encounter and partake in their lives is Chinese food. Ever since the first Chinese migrants brought the cuisine to the Japanese masses in the pre-World War II era, Chinese food has been the go-to choice for those looking to fill their stomachs on the cheap. With the country's defeat in World War II, many Japanese residents on the Chinese mainland were uprooted and returned to Japan, where many eeked out a living by peddling foods of their previously adopted homelands.

More than a year ago, I argued that a history of ethnic conflicts and a political structure that gives too much regional autonomy threatens the peace the country achieved under Abiy Ahmad, a 2019 Nobel Peace laureate. Indeed, as 2020 draws to a close, the Ethiopian federal government is on a military offensive against Tigray, a northern region whose ruling political party was once behind the political force behind the authoritarian regime that Abiy and his allies worked hard to overthrow. With the federal government cutting off electricity, water, and internet to Tigray and a large number of locals fleeing across the border to Sudan as refugees, the war threatens to destroy Abiy's hard-earned international reputation as a peacemaker.

For most casual readers of world history, the term "sphere of influence" has a distinct feel of yesteryears. The word conjures the image of colonial heydays when European powers drew artificial lines on a world map to mark the geographical limits of their competing interests. Within the drawn boundaries, puppet states were without any ability to make any independent decisions. Instead, small states are forced to follow the grand designs of their superpower "allies" and "partners" and not communicate with other superpowers. Students of history are taught that with the advent of formally signed agreements, of political, economic, and military nature, such "spheres of influences," grounded in unequal relationships between small and large states, are no longer present.