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No country attracts the level of discussion, interest, speculation, jokes, parodies, and outright fake news quite like North Korea. There are of course plenty of other places that receive a ton of attention because of their economic influence or soft power, but the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is fascinating because it appears frozen in an entirely different era away from everywhere else.

The DPRK’s existence is a direct result of Cold War geopolitics causing the division of the Korean Peninsula and that conflict never seeing a true resolution. In contrast to Germany with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the demilitarized zone has kept both Koreas permanently split. While South Korea later became a liberalized society after decades of military rule, North Korea is still run by a tinpot dictatorship that continues to lead with an iron fist after three successive generations. Unlike Iran, the North Korean people are not in a position to protest their leadership and there is little evidence of any real mobilized internal dissent that could create such conditions.

For over a decade, I dedicated my life to being a student of everything related to North Korea. The stories I heard growing up of my family’s experiences with the Chinese Cultural Revolution originally sparked my interest because the DPRK is the only society left on earth which remains comparable to the Communist Bloc. In high school, I began seriously reading every book I could get on the subject. The gravity of the human rights violations under the Kims and the tragedy of so many families separated by the Korean War are still chilling to think about long after I first learned about them. North Korea later became the central pillar of my life when I entered graduate school fully intending to specialize in geopolitical issues between Japan and the Korean Peninsula.

In part one of this column series, I wrote about dropping out of academia. In part two, I further explained why international relations couldn’t provide me a career in Japan. In this third and final part, I will now provide a debriefing on why I had to finally give up North Korean studies as well. This one especially saddens me because my work reporting on the DPRK was a big reason why I have a readership to begin with. This niche, but fascinating world introduced me to so many incredible people and allowed me to gain bylines as a geopolitical commentator at several respected outlets.

Like I wrote about IR, however, being a North Korea specialist unfortunately did not translate into something I could earn a living from. I tried my best to expand my scope to general East Asia topics and seriously considered my other options as I withdrew from academia, but to no avail. What was once a topic that truly made me feel passionate about being a journalist and researcher for almost the entirety of my 20s is now something I have to regrettably put away and move on from.

There are no jobs and I met all the experts

For a country that’s as fascinating as North Korea, you may be surprised to learn that there are relatively few specialists relative to other geopolitical conflicts. Compared to the Middle East and Russia, the pool of researchers and journalists who have spent their entire careers studying the Korean Peninsula is shockingly small.

George Bush famously included North Korea in his January 2002 State of the Union speech where he referred to the country as part of the “Axis of Evil” with Iraq and Iran. Yet in retrospect, this was mostly a throwaway line. The DPRK has largely been secondary or tertiary to other ongoing wars and conflicts the United States finds itself involved with. Sure, it definitely matters, but there are almost always bigger fish to fry. The DPRK is often subsumed by issues related to its bigger brother China, which occupies much more global airtime and focus.

North Korea is, unsurprisingly, a far greater immediate concern to South Korea due to their shared border and the fact that the Korean War itself is technically not over. Japan is also affected due to Pyongyang’s frequent missile tests and the decades-long unresolved issue of the DPRK kidnapping Japanese citizens, but these are mostly localized problems that few outside this region really think about. If you recall what I wrote in my previous two columns about academia and international relations, long-term job prospects for reporting on North Korea full-time are similarly very limited.

Even within a university environment, it’s rare for someone to specialize only in DPRK studies and you generally need to have a wider purview. With me having quit academia, I ran into the same problems I had with trying to find a sustainable occupation related to international relations. Virtually all policy and journalism positions connected to North Korea are in Seoul or to a lesser extent Washington D.C., and that’s not an option for me as someone who has chosen to live in Japan permanently.

The closest I got was a remote job for NK News, an independent organization that’s largely considered the most respected outlet specializing in Korean Peninsula affairs. As both a freelance writer and manager of their social media accounts, I had to closely observe the latest headlines and state media around North Korea. It paid much better than most jobs graduate students typically get and it was something directly related to what I was researching. I wound up frequently visiting Seoul because of the friends and colleagues I made through NK News.

Unfortunately, that eventually came to an end after two-and-a-half years. The direction NK News wanted to take their social media in required working in person at their Seoul office along with additional responsibilities far beyond the scope of a remote role. While they were kind enough to offer relocating me, I was still convinced I wanted to continue with my Ph.D and I had no desire to leave Japan. I thought that academia around Korean Peninsula issues would be the basis of my actual career, not knowing at the time that this too wouldn’t pan out.

The other issue was that throughout the years I researched North Korean topics, I gradually realized how difficult it is to make an original contribution to the field. I met experts like Andrei Lankov, defectors like Hyun-Seung Lee, and top diplomats like Stephen Biegun. Peter Ward, one of the top specialists on the DPRK’s economy, is a dear friend. Bradley Martin, author of one of the best books ever written about North Korea, is a reader of this Substack. I’m indebted to NK News founder Chad O’Carroll for hiring me and putting me in a position to make all these connections in the first place. What they all have in common is marketable skills or qualifications in other areas while being in the right place to have a career in North Korean studies.

Based on my location and educational background, I tried to position myself as a writer on Japan-DPRK relations. I appeared on podcasts, YouTube videos, and international television while I worked on my Ph.D. In the end, though, it wasn’t enough to land me a full-time job that could provide a livable salary. It’s a bit of an amusing contradiction; there are few real experts on North Korea, but there are also plenty of people who can do what I attempted much better.

I’ll likely never visit North Korea

This one specifically affects me as an American citizen. Following the tragic death of student Otto Warmbier in 2017, the U.S. Department of State imposed an official travel ban to North Korea. This rule has been in place for nearly a decade and shows no signs of being repealed. Any U.S. citizen who is found out to have visited the DPRK risks getting their passport revoked and other steep legal penalties.

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Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Articles such as these are exclusively for paid subscribers, so if you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

Take 20% off all paid subscriptions to Foreign Perspectives via my end of summer sale here!

International relations, what are they good for? If you mean the interactions and foreign policies among countries, then quite a lot. If you mean the academic discipline of studying such relations and future job prospects, well, that’s a different story.

In my last column, I went into detail about how I ended up dropping out of my doctoral program in IR at Ritsumeikan University after navigating the pitfalls of academia for nearly five years. It surprisingly became one of the most-viewed articles on this Substack, so it must have resonated with enough people who are familiar with postgraduate education or perhaps have even gone through it themselves.

But what about international relations as a subject? While I wasn’t able to get my Ph.D, I’ve had a master’s in it since 2021. It’s something, right? Unfortunately, that piece of paper on my shelf has about as much use in Japan as a bicycle does on the frozen tundras of Siberia. Sure, it technically could help you navigate the desolate landscape if you’re lucky, but why would you choose such an inefficient means of transportation in a largely unsuitable environment? That’s basically what my IR degree is here when it comes to career advancement.

I previously explained why I wasn’t suited for the academic world of international relations. In this second part, I’ll dive into the main reasons why being an IR major is unlikely to help me outside of it, either. While IR may have some application overseas, it’s a very small field that few are really aware of in Japan. In the past, I’ve spoken to other foreigners who thought that studying IR might help them avoid the typical bottom-of-the-barrel English teaching route which pays peanuts. Let me be the one to burst that bubble: unless you have other qualifications or an existing path to employment with the right connections, it probably isn’t.

There really aren’t many IR jobs in Japan

In a vacuum, international relations is a fascinating field which plays an important role in explaining the major geopolitical problems of our time. If you’ve ever wondered why some countries are close allies and why some countries are seemingly eternal enemies, then you already have some familiarity with IR. Scholars have dedicated their entire lives toward studying various conflicts across the world, and a handful of them like Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice even went on to occupy considerably high positions of political power. As I elucidated last time, however, the academic track was a dead end for me and you won’t see me advising the President of the United States anytime soon.

To begin with, there are actually relatively few international relations departments at Japanese universities. The one I was admitted to at Ritsumeikan University here in Kyoto is considered among the best, while Waseda University in Tokyo is the other most notable one. You might find a political science program at a handful institutions throughout the country, but it’s not a popular major among Japanese students. Ritsumeikan’s own website reporting where its IR undergraduates go to even lists that the majority of them enter manufacturing, services, IT, finances, or trading companies. You obviously don’t need an IR degree for those. What’s more useful is demonstrating marketable skills.

Additionally, few Japanese undergrads move on to graduate school unless they want to specialize in academia or research. When my original plan was to finish my Ph.D., hopefully do a postdoc, and move on to becoming a full-time professor, then sure, my plan made sense. Now that I’m an ex-academic in the wilderness, all I have is a piece of paper which proves I could do two years of slightly advanced research on Japan’s North Korea policy under the Shinzo Abe administration. The name of the school I graduated from holds far more value than what I actually studied since a university like Ritsumiekan has some prestige among Japanese employers.

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Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

I am now just another statistic. Specifically, you can count me as part of the data point often cited which estimates that almost half of graduate students do not finish their Ph.Ds. Some may doubt that number, but given the state of academia these days and the limited long-term job prospects for those even with a degree, I’m inclined to believe that it’s closer to reality than not.

Earlier this year, I finally decided to drop out of my doctorate course at the Ritsumeikan Graduate School of International Relations. I had already known that I would be abandoning a career in academia since summer 2025 to look for greener pastures elsewhere. At the very least, though, I figured that I could finish the degree just to say that I had done it. After all, I successfully completed a master’s in IR and spent nearly half a decade toward a Ph.D. Why put all that to waste?

As it turns out, several factors outside of my control prevented me from completing my doctorate. The amount of years it would have taken to continue was not a realistic prospect given my age and future plans, so it was time to call a spade a spade. I’m now at a major crossroads as I begin the process of transitioning into the next stage of my life in starting a business while writing books on the side. I’ve been fortunate to have a life few foreigners in Japan get to experience, but my previous trajectory was simply not sustainable.

In this first entry of a three-part column series, I will chronicle what went wrong in my odyssey through academia and why I chose to move on. The second part will go into the difficulty of making international relations a full-time career, which is why I had to let it go. The third part will dive into why I left North Korean studies, a topic I spent over a decade following.

Why I wanted to be an academic

Having studied abroad in Japan from 2017 to 2018 in my third year of undergrad, I had to consider what my future would be after returning to the United States and graduating. I initially planned to do a dual-major in Japanese and Business, but the latter did not pan out because I couldn’t fulfill the math requirements beyond algebra. Business Calculus to this day remains the only course I’ve ever completely failed, and no amount of remediation could help me.1 That unfortunately cut me off from high-paying STEM fields, so I had to settle with a major in Japanese and a minor in English.

You’re free to make your jokes about useless humanities degrees — and I wouldn’t blame you — but I had some promising opportunities in front of me. I was fortunate enough to learn Japanese through the University of Pittsburgh’s East Asian Studies department, which is one of the best in America. I received multiple scholarships to take intensive summer language courses, work a summer internship in Yamaguchi Prefecture at a glass company, and do a homestay in Kobe, so the momentum for me to continue was there. I knew that I wanted to return to Japan and I was truly passionate about further education, so I believed that graduate school would allow me to fulfill both goals.

As cliched as it may sound, I became a graduate student because I wanted to pursue knowledge as a researcher and hopefully become an academic myself one day. International relations was the perfect field that aligned with my interests at the time. Japan is right in the center of important geopolitical events that unfold in East Asia, and regional tensions with North Korea were at a boiling point when I first moved to Japan in 2017. Given my Chinese family’s history of surviving the Cultural Revolution, I had an existing interest in the DPRK and its associated human rights issues. This was also when Donald Trump was engaging in his diplomacy with Kim Jong Un, while the tragic issue of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea was the topic of my capstone thesis.

I discovered the MEXT scholarship, a grant provided by the Japanese government which waives tuition, includes a monthly stipend, and even includes a free plane ticket to Japan. This is one of the most competitive scholarships in the world, but against all odds I was somehow able to secure it to enroll in the international relations master’s program at Ritsumeikan University from fall 2019. The next two years taught me how to do research and think like an academic.

While undergoing my studies at Ritsumeikan, I became an employee of NK News, one of the most well-regarded outlets reporting the Korean Peninsula. With a completed master’s under the MEXT scholarship and a part-time job at a respected website directly related to my field, I could not have asked for anything better. If that wasn’t enough, I was able to make lightning strike twice by successfully re-applying for the MEXT scholarship to cover the next step of my journey: a Ph.D. Getting MEXT the first time around was a challenge, but being able to extend it another three years for a doctoral degree is something that almost never happens.

Part of me believes it was because 2021 was when Japan was still closed off to most would-be graduate students during the pandemic, but another part hopes that it was also because I submitted a strong application. Regardless, I was confident that I could continue building upon what I had accomplished during my master’s. By 2024, I would be Dr. Oliver Jia on his way to a teaching job! Or so I thought.

The publishing requirements got to me

While finishing my previous thesis was all I needed to graduate from my master’s program, Ritsumeikan’s requirements for receiving a doctoral degree are far stricter. In addition to the dissertation, you need a minimum of at least three academic publications. No problem, I thought. While working on my doctoral degree, I could easily hammer out these papers. I was already writing about North Korea for NK News and expanding my bylines as a freelance journalist to other outlets, so this would be a piece of cake.

And in the beginning, things seemed to be going ok. For my first academic paper, I decided to find a publisher for my master’s thesis. An analysis of the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe administration’s policy toward North Korea, I edited it down into a concise paper for the journal North Korean Review. My submission was accepted and published in spring 2023. But if you’re keeping up with the timeline, you’ll notice that it took nearly two full years to go from finishing my master’s thesis to getting it published — nearly the same amount of time the actual master’s course itself took.

While that was somewhat of an extreme case, academic publishing is often a slow process. Undeterred, I immediately got to work writing my second article. I decided to focus on the Pyongyang Declaration, a historic agreement brokered between Japan and North Korea in 2002. I wanted to explain why despite initial hopes, diplomacy ultimately collapsed and how virtually all pieces of paper signed with the Kim regime suffer from the same problems. I even presented my article at a 2022 academic conference sponsored by North Korean Review in Seoul to good reception.

I must have easily gotten my paper published soon afterward, right? Nope. I spent the next four years pitching the article to publication after publication, including my university’s student journal. I was told that it didn’t offer a new contribution to the field of DPRK studies and that I lacked a solid theoretical framework. It was disappointing to hear, especially after I had spent so much time constantly re-editing the material. And remember, I still had to publish a third article on top of that. To make matters worse, I was informed by the department that my doctoral thesis wouldn’t even be looked at if I didn’t have all three papers published in advance.

This doctorate program, which was initially supposed to have lasted for three years, had gone on for nearly five years. While it is common for Ph.Ds to take longer than advertised, this was beyond the scholarship period MEXT offered. Tuition for additional semesters was thankfully low-cost enough for me to pay out of pocket after the scholarship period ended, but there was no way I could continue on any longer while waiting for academic publications to get back to me. Even if these extra papers were not an issue, my actual doctoral thesis was proving to be its own challenge as well.

Academic writing became the bane of my existence

Have you ever heard of neoclassical realism? To put it in layman’s terms, it’s a school of thought in international relations which argues that leaders are constrained by domestic factors when deciding official foreign policy in response to external pressures. Straightforward, right? Now read how IR scholar Norman Ripsman describes it:

Neoclassical realism is an approach to foreign policy analysis that seeks to understand international politics by taking into account the nature of the international system—the political environment within which states interact. Taking neorealism as their point of departure, neoclassical realists argue that states respond in large part to the constraints and opportunities of the international system when they conduct their foreign and security policies, but that their responses are shaped by unit-level factors such as state–society relations, the nature of their domestic political regimes, strategic culture, and leader perceptions. Neoclassical realists have identified a number of important limitations to the neorealist model—for example, states do not always perceive systemic stimuli correctly, or the international system does not always present clear signals about threats and opportunities.

Are you still awake? Believe it or not, that wall of text is actually just three sentences and it’s only half of what’s supposed to be a brief abstract. Welcome to the world of academic writing! Ripsman isn’t even considered a particularly dense or complicated scholar and his work is usually on entry-level syllabi for new students of international relations. But the deeper into the weeds you get with such theories, the harder it becomes to keep up. If you found your concentration trailing off while trying to read up on neoclassical realism, congratulations. You’ve realized in five seconds what it took nearly five years for me to admit: academic writing is an abomination.

Non-academic outsiders often chalk this up to academics trying to sound fancy to hide weak ideas. On the other hand, some academics themselves may argue that their fields are too complicated for anything but convoluted language to suffice. There is a grain of truth to both claims, but the reality is more nuanced. As Steven Pinker wrote in his 2014 essay, “Why Academics Stink at Writing,” the real root cause is that those who have mastered a topic often forget the perspectives of people who don’t share the same level of knowledge.

International relations occupies a weird gray zone between the humanities and social sciences. It is technically part of the latter with economics and sociology, but it often touches upon history, literature, and philosophy. With that said, it is still heavily theory-based. I would be here all day if I tried to describe every IR theory from liberalism to the different types of realism, but every student in this field will inevitably encounter them. While some IR scholars care more about theory than others, academic publishers and reviewers will often be less than enthused if you don’t provide some kind of framework that references the accepted literature.

My doctoral thesis intended to cover the complicated relations between Japan and South Korea and their contrasting responses to mutual threats from North Korea. The research question analyzed this contradiction: Why do both countries not show full cooperation despite being democratic societies allied with the United States who all have a common enemy in the Kim regime? The obvious reason is their long-standing historical issues, but I wanted to explore what conditions created unavoidable tensions and what conditions allowed for solidarity to appear. I needed a theoretical framework as a mechanism for the thesis, so this is where the domestic pressures as outlined in neoclassical realism were most obvious to me.2

However, this is where the practical side of my dissertation began conflicting with the theoretical portion. As a journalist who previously tried to make a complex topic like the history of Japan and the Koreas as understandable as possible to the public, I don’t think you “need” a theory like neoclassical realism to explain geopolitics. If anything, it just makes things even more obscure to the average person. My editors for the outlets I wrote for would eliminate as much needless jargon as possible, but my advising professors insisted I show a robust understanding and application of IR theory.

To the best of my ability, I aimed to incorporate neoclassical realism with my research and the case studies I chose. I even tried to utilize the theory with that paper on the Pyongyang Declaration I spent literal years submitting to academic journals. Yet I was told that my attempted use of the theory was inadequate even after multiple revisions. And fair enough, perhaps it was. At the same time, it also made me realize that my writing is really that of a journalist or columnist who produces work for as wide of a readership as possible instead of a circle of academics obsessed with theoretical paradigms. The idea of trying to force myself to write like an academic for the rest of my life was the equivalent of asking me to eat glass as my only source of food.

Academics live in a brutally competitive world. As was demonstrated in my experience, the publish or perish model is the only way anyone can get ahead when there are more Ph.Ds than available jobs. You need to sound like you know what you’re talking about, especially when it comes to something as abstract as theory. This leads to an extremely self-conscious mentality where no one wants to come across as lacking in knowledge compared to the next guy. If the way I described neoclassical realism wasn’t good enough for a handful of reviewers looking at a short paper, that gave me little confidence that my doctoral dissertation of well over 70,000 words would be accepted.3

Facing the music

With publication requirements I would never meet, academic writing I couldn’t stand, and the prior knowledge that nothing I was doing would lead to a career anyways, I realistically had no other choice but to call it quits. My bylines as a journalist also didn’t mean anything here, either. In fact, most academics inevitably look down on “non-academic” sources. I was once told by a professor a couple of years ago that I couldn’t use Max Hastings, the author of one of the most acclaimed books on the Korean War, as a source on the Korean War. In retrospect, I should have realized then that I didn’t belong in this world.

Still, I can’t say that everything I did was a complete waste of time. Graduate school had been my entry back into Japan and it gave me a springboard to network with other people. I earned a scholarship to study what I genuinely cared about. Knowing how to do proper research is a skill I use in other aspects of my life. I met some incredible people along the way and made a few friends. Ritsumeikan is a well-regarded school, so having a master’s from there gives me some clout when I submit my CV. Many Japanese employers care more about the school you went to than what you studied. I suppose that isn’t nothing. And if I had never moved to Kyoto, I would have never met my wife. That alone is the biggest reason why I don’t regret the entire experience.

I should also emphasize that just because academia didn’t work out for me, that doesn’t mean it won’t work out for you. If you’re someone who has the fortitude to master the lingo, enjoys studying theory, and can figure out how to get multiple publications to build your credentials, then you’ll probably have much more success than I did. It saddens me that my path with postgraduate education had to end here, but I now have to reposition my life toward something that can actually provide a living.

In the next part of this column series, I will go into more detail on why international relations unfortunately did not pan out as a career, Ph.D or not.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

Foreign Perspectives has finally hit 100 posts with this column!

My Substack newsletter began in 2023 to serve as an assemblage of writing which was too esoteric or niche for most of the outlets I submitted freelance pieces to. It has provided me with a space to wax on long-form about the topics which matter the most to me and deliver those thoughts to the inboxes of likeminded readers. I wanted to escape the noise of social media where nuance goes to die and contribute some clarity in a sea of chaos. It was more for myself than anyone else, but I’m pleased to see that over 1200 subscribers are still interested in what I have to say three years later.

Before I get into the meat and potatoes of this piece which contains several major life updates, I would be remiss if I didn’t state the most important point first: Foreign Perspectives continues to exist entirely because of my readership. Whether you are a free or paid subscriber, your support has given me the motivation to keep this operation going. As someone who has done social media management before, I can assure you that many of the pieces here do better numbers than some articles on professional outlets with far larger audiences.

Most of my readers are free subscribers, but some of you are generous VIP founding members, some of you have gone for a yearly subscription, and some of you pay for the monthly tier whenever your personal situation permits. I can’t describe myself as being anything other than profoundly grateful for all of the patronage thrown my way, whether it’s financial or simply just opening your email when my updates hit your inbox. So once again, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

This column commemorating 100 posts on Foreign Perspectives has a lot to cover, so I’ve divided it into three sections: one announcing my upcoming book, one providing updates around what’s currently happening to me behind the scenes, and one giving a retrospective on how this Substack has changed over time. 2026 is shaping up to be the most transformative year of my life so far, and there is admittedly more uncertainty than I’m usually comfortable with, but I fully intend to keep Foreign Perspectives around for the foreseeable future.

Foreign Perspectives is being turned into a book!

I can now finally announce something that has been in the works for quite some time: a self-published book! It will be a compilation of writing from this Substack covering my time living in Japan for nearly a decade. So please look forward to Foreign Perspectives: Esoteric Essays on Life and Travel in Japan, which will hopefully hit Amazon Kindle worldwide by Christmas of this year.

A lot has changed for both me and Japan since I first arrived on its shores in 2017. Part-travelogue, part-memoir, Esoteric Essays covers underrated travel destinations off the beaten path, moments of tragedy during the pandemic, common challenges long-term foreign residents learn to overcome, a bit of romance, and much more. This book, however, is no mere collection of old stuff you’ve already read on this Substack. Across roughly 20 essays, half are significantly updated reprints and half are completely brand new. Given that Esoteric Essays is basically telling the story of my first decade in Japan, everything will be carefully edited for flow and to be in general chronological order.

Plenty of foreigners have written books about their experiences living in Japan, but everyone always contributes a new perspective. This one follows a similar tradition from authors like Ian Buruma, Edwin O. Reischauer, and Donald Keene who entwined their own personal journeys with the changing Japan around them. In fact, one of the included essays will be an edited piece I wrote about Dr. Keene many years ago with an interview I conducted with him over email before he passed away. I’m certainly looking forward to sharing this material and other anecdotes with all of you.

Foreign Perspectives: Esoteric Essays on Life and Travel in Japan will technically be my first book, though I personally consider it more of an exercise to see if I can actually complete and sell one to begin with. I have plans to write more books which will take considerably more planning and research by comparison. Esoteric Essays is already about 60% done since it draws upon existing pieces, but the process of drafting a reasonably coherent narrative and the extensive editing involved are important skills I need to practice. It’s essentially training wheels for future literature to come.

Amazon KDP will allow me to quickly self-publish Esoteric Essays in eBook and paperback formats, but I will also look into seeing if hardcover and color images are possible depending on final costs. Be on the look out for more precise details on cover art, content, purchasing links, and more later this year.

From failed academic to failing upwards businessman

Next comes a few important updates. You’ve probably noticed that 2026 has been a less active year for Foreign Perspectives compared to previous ones, and that’s sadly been unavoidable to a series of big changes going on in my life. Those who follow me on Twitter are probably aware of most of these developments, but I’ll bring my readers here up to speed.

I’ve dropped out of my international relations doctoral program. After nearly five years of being a Ph.D candidate, I decided in April to suspend my studies at Ritsumeikan University. I’m currently writing a three-part column detailing everything that led to me quitting academia, but long story short, I wasn’t going to meet the graduation requirements anytime soon.

While the doctoral dissertation was progressing decently enough, my department mandates that you have at least three academic publications at the time of submission. Without them, they won’t even look at your thesis. I only had one publication and the second kept getting rejected by my university’s student journal despite multiple revisions. Submitting to another journal, writing a third academic article from scratch, and finishing my dissertation on top of that would have taken me another 1-2 years at minimum.

That’s time I simply don’t have to burn, especially when I already decided last summer that I would be giving up my plan of becoming a professor. I’m a competent enough freelance journalist, but I’ve realized that I’m not suited for the world of academic writing and dedicating decades of my life toward producing largely thankless research only a select few people will ever read. I was a graduate student for far too long and with me turning 30 next year, it is long past time I had a real career.

I’m effectively retired from geopolitical commentary. With me leaving international relations as an academic discipline, it makes little sense to continue writing about global affairs and politics when it no longer aligns with my long-term plans. While I do have a master’s in IR and bylines in widely-read outlets like The Spectator, neither are going to pay the bills. Even if I had trudged through my Ph.D., trying to find an academic position related to geopolitics in Japan is already slim pickings. Outside of The Japan Times, you have a snowball’s chance in hell of being a full-time journalist who gets paid to write in English.

The other reason is that it quickly becomes difficult to find a “normal” job if you’re constantly in the world of contentious political subjects. I’m far from the most controversial talking head out there, but my opinions tied to my real name and face have been easily searchable for years. There was recently a potential opportunity for me running the Japanese branch of a foreign friend’s company, so being an outspoken political commentator is the last thing you want when representing a public-facing commentary.

For various reasons unrelated to politics, this position ended up being shelved indefinitely and I’m instead pursuing my own self-run business venture. That technically gives me more intellectual freedom than most, but as someone who is hoping to sell products and services to the public, being embroiled in any form of online controversy is the last thing I want. I should be clear, however, that I don’t regret any article I’ve published. I’m only moving on to the next chapter of my life because career paths and priorities change.

Of course, this doesn’t mean I’ll never touch upon anything political in my writing ever again. I now primarily write about cultural and big picture topics, but politics are always around the corner to some degree. I’d just rather write about subjects like being an advocate for physical media and consumer digital rights, which I assume most across the political spectrum would be in broad agreement on. The books and novels I hope to eventually write will almost certainly cover heavy subject matter as well. No matter what, I’ll be a writer until my dying day.

I’ve decided to leave personal social media behind. This is a major lifestyle change coming from a Twitter user who was active every day for over 13 years with 50,000 followers, but it had to be done. My reasons range from disliking the overall direction of the site to wanting to reduce all negative distractions. Last month I finally deleted the app from my phone, and it’s already boosted my productivity, attention span, and overall happiness. I’ll dive more into this subject in a future column once enough time has passed for the positive effects to fully sink in. From this point forward, I’m only using my main account on desktop to post updates related to this Substack and my company. Speaking of which…

I’ve started a business. This is easily the most important new development. With an academic career no longer in the cards, I’ve spent the last year planning the next stage of my life. In March, I officially established a holdings company registered in Kyoto with a Canadian partner who I’ve known as a good friend for years. We’re still in the early stages of getting our business plans off the ground, but I can now formally introduce myself as the CEO of Smith & Jia Holdings.

Our first venture will be selling vinyl records, retro video games, toys, figures, and other nostalgic items domestically in Japan and to foreign customers abroad. Instead of starting completely from scratch, we have been scouting businesses run by owners of retirement age who have no immediate successor. By continuing where they left off through a full M&A purchase, the intention is to maintain their existing connections to the local community while expanding overseas. We have already narrowed the search down to a few candidates for a physical retail location and will be launching an international e-commerce site in tandem.

After a lengthy application process, we finally received our permit to sell used goods last month. There is still a ton of work to do in acquiring inventory, securing loans, establishing retail space, and building the website, but things are progressing reasonably well. Since a secondhand goods store on the independent mom and pop business model in Japan can only generate so much revenue, especially when split between the two of us and at least one part-time employee, we will be aggressively pursuing foreign sales and already have an export partner lined up. I’ve even gotten some DMs about individual custom orders, so I have some optimism that we have a good idea on our hands.

This store is just the beginning of what we hope to do with our company. Once we have one successful location going, we will look into setting up others. Our holdings company is additionally poised to help other foreign clients set up their own business ventures in Japan as the language and bureaucracy are notoriously difficult for outsiders to navigate through. Much of this is new to me as someone freshly removed from the world of academia, but my partner and other friends with more experience are thankfully here to show me the ropes of business.

Look forward to future announcements once we have our retail location decided and our e-commerce site launched.

A (reasonably) brief history of this Substack

Still with me? Well, thanks for reading this far. To close things off and to celebrate 100 posts, I thought I’d take a trip down memory lane in showing how much Foreign Perspectives has evolved over time. Just as my career path has taken many twists and turns, so has the overall format and direction of this Substack.

My debut post for Foreign Perspectives was published on May 3, 2023. It’s a piece recounting my visit to Nagasaki’s Dejima Island the previous year and represents my lifelong affinity for travelogues. In addition to whatever fascinating historical context exists, I do my best to put readers in my shoes with detailed recollections of what I felt when I visit particular locations that mean something to me. I’m also someone who constantly photographs everything, so I like for the images I include to do most of the talking. Though the article itself is rather brief, it’ll always hold a special place as my Substack’s maiden voyage and you can expect an expanded version in Esoteric Essays.

The rest of 2023 set the tone for most of what Foreign Perspectives would typically cover. I wrote about Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva being my favorite film adaptation of a video game, provided a lengthy deep-dive into the criminally underrated The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles television series, and gave my thoughts on the ups and downs of life in Japan. My most popular piece from this year was the one on Yasuke, which explored the controversy around a 16th century African who may or may not have been a samurai in the service of Oda Nobunaga.

The piece from 2023 I wish had gotten more attention was about Abel Gance’s 1927 silent film Napoleon, but that’s the trade-off when you choose more obscure topics. Regardless of what subject I write about, I aim to explore as many nuances as I can and try to get to the bottom of why something turned out the way it did. An event is controversial or a film is underrated for some reason, so I task myself with trying to recreate the chronology of events. Most of my articles usually end up telling a story, which is a skill I imagine will come in handy when I eventually expand into fiction.

In 2024, I introduced two columns to Foreign Perspectives: Bonus Perspectives and A Bit of Film and War. The former was intended to cover one piece of international news, one piece of Japanese news, and my thoughts on whatever media I was consuming that week. The latter was intended to be a review and breakdown of war movies, my favorite cinema genre. I did my best to keep up with both in addition to the regular columns, but it ended up being too much trying to keep up with. While Bonus Perspectives is retired, A Bit of Film and War will likely come back on an infrequent basis because there are still plenty of war pictures I want to write about.

2025, particularly the latter half, is when I felt that Foreign Perspectives finally hit its stride as a more focused newsletter. Despite still being under the impression that I would be finishing my doctoral thesis, I continued to put aside time to write detailed columns on topics that I felt deserved more coverage. I gushed about Andor, went semi-viral on Substack writing about why Japanese people don’t speak English, and wrote an obituary for Tatsuya Nakadai.

2026 has been quieter by comparison and I no longer write about geopolitics for the reasons previously detailed, but I’m still here. Probably the most important piece I’ve written so far this year is my lament about Sony’s plan to end production of physical PlayStation discs in 2028. This will no doubt provide material for future columns as we’re entering some very concerning territory for long-term consumer ownership of media. Through my writing and business ventures, I’ll do my best to extol the virtues of physical media and media preservation for as long as I can.

Thank you for being a part of Foreign Perspectives. Our journey into foreign places continues.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

A look back on 2025

The 2020s are now halfway over, if you can believe it. So much has already happened during this decade that I both dread and look forward to whatever could possibly be in store for the rest. For better or worse, 2025 in many ways did feel like a pivotal turning point for history. It marked Trump returning to office, Japan getting its first female prime minister, and many global conflicts reaching their apparent crescendos (but not really). Taylor Swift also announced she was getting married, which I’m sure is more earth-shattering than all of the above for some people.

This is the last column of 2025 for Foreign Perspectives. Like what I did at the end of 2024, it’s a retrospective on my personal achievements and some thoughts on world events. I also use this opportunity to provide a look back on my best writing and the media that enriched my life the most throughout the last twelve months. But first, an apology. As you’ve probably noticed, things have been pretty barren here for the last few months. It started off as a productive year with me uploading columns nearly every week, but by the time the summer hit, all of that dropped off a cliff. I previously had to end Bonus Perspectives because there simply wasn’t enough time to keep doing it. October had no pieces at all and this is the only one for the month of December. To my paid subscribers especially, I deeply apologize.

In short, my life is going through a major transition period. As I write this column, the initial submission of my doctoral thesis in international relations is due by late January. I’m writing that behemoth every day, which is the main reason for there not being enough bandwidth to focus on Foreign Perspectives. I’ve also landed a regular freelance gig at The Dispatch, and they have given me more freedom than any other professional outlet I’ve contributed to. In fact, my latest for them discussing the decline of Star Wars under Disney was posted last week.

And if all of that wasn’t enough, I’ll still be in the middle of my annual end-of-year holiday with my wife hopping across multiple Japanese cities by the time this goes up. On trains and in hotels between our visits to hot springs and shrines, I’ve been writing my doctoral thesis and this column at the same time. I wanted to get it out to you all by the end of the year because it’s important to me and I owe it to my subscribers here at Foreign Perspectives. So once again, thank you for sticking with me through thick and thin.

While I’m hard at work finishing my thesis, I made the difficult decision this summer that I would not continue on with academia afterward. That’s right, after over five years working on my Ph.D, I’m deciding to call it quits right after I earn the damn thing. The biggest reason is because I’m currently in the process of moving into a different field entirely, one that will hopefully prove to be far more lucrative and fulfilling if it pans out. I can’t officially reveal what it is just yet, but rest assured there will be a full announcement here if and when it happens later in 2026.

The other reason for my departure from academia, however, I can talk about: I’ve simply fallen out of interest. When I moved to Japan for the second time in 2019, it was on a fully paid scholarship to do a two-year master’s program. After I finished that in 2021, I was able to extend the scholarship to cover what was supposed to be a three-year doctoral program. Well, as you can probably gather from where we are now, it’s been much longer than three years. The process to get to this point where I’m finally writing my doctoral thesis and about to submit it has been a frustrating one to say the least. As I was approaching the end of the tunnel, I also looked to see if there were any future job opportunities in Japan for someone researching Japan-North Korea relations such as yours truly.

To cut a long story that will be saved for a future column on why you probably shouldn’t bother with North Korean studies short, I hit a dead end. I searched high and low for any kind of assistant professor job I could do starting in April 2026 (the beginning of the next academic year in Japan) but found nada. Zilch. Nothing. You lose. Good day, sir. I then considered the next best alternative: a postdoc or research position. This only raised a question that had been curdling in the back of my mind for quite some time: Do I really want to go through all of this again with another research topic while I’ll probably be making peanuts in the process?

The answer is of course no, which brings us to the present. Throughout 2025 and the last couple of years, I’ve been fortunate to build my career as a freelance writer. I’ve achieved bylines in respected outlets columnists twice my age struggle to get while also mingling with some big names in geopolitics and other fields related to my interests. Why would I want to spend the rest of my life writing dusty academic articles that will probably be read by less than ten people each in dense language the average Joe can’t even understand? Most of the time you don’t even get paid to write this stuff. I can’t make a living off only being a freelancer, but what I get per article is usually at least enough for a nice dinner with the wife.

It took me a long time to stop kidding myself, but here I am now. I have to seriously think about the future both for myself and for my wife, especially since we’re approaching our 30s which is when you need to start planning if you want a family. We certainly intend to have children, but I have to be able to support that kind of lifestyle first. To tie everything back to the beginning of this ramble, I approached my turning point in 2025. I had the time of my life in the first half of this decade as a graduate student living abroad and came out of it as a married man. What happens for the rest of this decade is going to be new territory for me as I’ll finally be moving on from anything to do with schooling or academia. Better late than never, but I’ll save the full story for another day.

Health-wise, 2025 was the year I hit the ground running — literally. Since the end of 2023 until now I’ve dropped close to 22 kg (48.5 pounds). I had gained all that weight in the first place in an attempt to adapt to the bodybuilding lifestyle popular on social media through “dirty bulking,” but mostly just ended up gaining fat. So 2024 was spent undoing that mistake through diet, while 2025 was me finally being light enough to get back into serious running. I was able to get my 5K down to under 26 minutes (nearly at 25) while doing 10Ks, 15Ks, and even half-marathons all for the first time. My next goal is to spend 2026 training for the 2027 Kyoto Marathon. It’ll be a challenge for sure, but having gotten used to long distances, I’m only building upon what I’ve already accomplished.

Speaking of accomplishments, I have to once again thank all of you for bringing Foreign Perspectives to well over 1000 subscribers in 2025. Part of this was due to my own push in the first half of the year to deliver timely content (sorry again about the last half), but another reason was me recommending other Substack publications and them recommending mine in turn. The material posted here can be all over the place as I don’t limit myself to just one subject, but I hope new and old subscribers alike have enjoyed the diversity of content. Rest assured, Foreign Perspectives isn’t going away in 2026. After I submit my doctoral thesis, I fully intend on returning to more articles on Substack while continuing my freelance writing for other outlets even as I change careers.

I’ll end this already long introduction with some brief thoughts on major events that I followed throughout 2025:

The return of Trump: I consider myself a center-right political moderate, but have never been anything close to a MAGA guy. I have friends and families who hate the man’s guts, while I know others who think he’s the bee’s knees. As an American who lives abroad, the only thing I can really comment on with Trump is how he approaches issues that affect my life such as trade and foreign policy. Unsurprisingly, I’m largely not a fan. While he’s done some good things in the Middle East, Trump’s tariffs have only alienated America’s allies and will inevitably cause many countries to look to China as a trading partner instead. It’s still too early to really know what the long term consequences will be, but I don’t live in the U.S. and I’m already Trumped out after ten years of him being a constant presence in all discourse.

Ukraine: A war I’ve had serious investment in since it started in 2022 due to the friends and colleagues I’ve made who are directly involved. I view Russia as one of the most evil regimes on the planet. It’s both a pragmatic and moral imperative that Putin’s ambitions to take over Ukraine, which he has been clear about many times, be stopped. Unfortunately, the current administration in Washington has done little but kick the Russian can down the road. February’s White House summit between Zelenskyy and Trump was one of the most shameful moments in American history. I previously believed that the U.S. would continue to stand with Ukraine after Russia’s continued stonewalling, but it’s now clear that Trump wants a hasty ceasefire that he can frame as “ending” the war in the short-term even if he knows hostilities will inevitably resume in the long-term. This is going to be a conflict that, like the Korean War, will remain technically ongoing for decades.

SignalGate: Pure idiocy which lowered my respect for Mike Waltz, who is otherwise an intelligent and accomplished political figure. Him being demoted to Trump’s ambassador to the U.N. was likely only done in consideration of his military service. It doesn’t mark the total end to his political career, but his lack of care in handling extremely sensitive intelligence does not bode well for his future either.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk: Utterly horrid, but sadly the culmination of political violence being normalized in the United States on both sides. It wasn’t the first time and it unfortunately won’t be the last time either.

Japan’s first female prime minister: Sanae Takaichi will likely be an improvement over the last few Japanese prime ministers, but she has big shoes to fill as the protégée of the late Shinzo Abe and Japan faces a ton of problems that will take more than public charisma to fix. I don’t think her administration will be a short-lived as Shigeru Ishiba’s, but longevity is never guaranteed in Japanese politics. See my column about Takaichi for The Dispatch here.

The general state of Japan in 2025: Things are far more pessimistic than the enthusiastic posts on social media from tourists who visit here for a ten-day holiday. I still have no plans to live anywhere else, but many Japanese people are struggling in the face of serious economic problems such as stagnant wages and rising costs of living. More foreign residents living in Japan is also an inevitable reality, which is why the government is carefully seeking to avoid the same mistakes as the West. See my column with further thoughts here.

China’s spat with Japan over Taiwan: Utter stupidity from the CCP that is a clearly calculated propaganda campaign to smear Japan as a nonexistent geopolitical bad guy. Takaichi’s remarks only stated the obvious and Taiwan isn’t going anywhere. The current diplomatic spat with eventually burn itself out, but it’s an eerie reminder that China’s aspirations to annex Taiwan should not be dismissed.

South Korea’s new president: Not a fan of his history of anti-Japanese rhetoric, but that was Lee Jae-myung before he had to run a country that needs Japan in the face of Trump and China. For the time being, he seems to have taken a pragmatic approach toward the U.S. and Japan instead of devolving into an ideologue like his predecessor Moon Jae-in. With that said, he has more common with Donald Trump than you may think despite their very different backgrounds. See my column about him I wrote for The Spectator here.

Netflix buying Warner Bros. Discovery: We live in hell.

The rise of AI slop: We live in hell.

My ten best pieces

As I powered through my doctoral program, I also continued my work as a freelance writer. My bylines in The Spectator and UnHerd continued as usual, but truth be told I’ll largely be moving away from geopolitical commentary in 2026. This is because the next stage of my career will likely require me to avoid publicly discussing anything too controversial, but I’m more interested in examining cultural topics anyway. The Dispatch has especially proven to be a wonderful platform. Most of my pitches are accepted and very little needs to be cut since they prioritize long-form essays. I look forward to continue working with them and whatever outlets wish to run my pieces.

Here are the ten best I wrote this year.

“Japan’s love affair with Dragon Quest spreads worldwide” — The Japan Times

A nice break from the more serious topics I usually cover. Dragon Quest is arguably the most popular video game series in Japan. The franchise is so huge that new game releases are planned on weekends so people don’t skip school or work. It took much longer for it to be successful in the West by comparison, but that too is finally changing. It was wonderful to discuss one of my favorite video game series and interview translator Jeremy Blaustein who I now consider a friend. Not only that, but Nagasaki Junior College even asked me if they could use some excerpts of the piece for one of their English exams! Now that’s one of my proudest achievements as a writer.

“A Personal Journey Through Japan Part 3: Toyooka” — Foreign Perspectives

I embarked on a solo trip to three Japanese cities in May 2024. Each of them meant something very personal to me because they played a key role in my formative experiences when I first came to Japan. I decided to turn my time on the road into an extensive three-part travelogue column, but it took until April of this year for me to finally conclude the series. Out of all of them, the piece on Toyooka was the most emotionally resonant as it centered around my first serious relationship. The larger themes are about the romantic feelings many expats tend to have toward their adopted country and how you eventually reach a crossroads at what direction to take your life in.

Going back to Toyooka after so much had changed for me over the years provided a sense of closure I very much needed. Incidentally, I went to Kinosaki Onsen again last week, this time with my wife. We had a wonderful experience and while I still felt nostalgic while we stayed at our hotel next to Toyooka Station, I no longer was wistful. This is a piece about some very specific experiences in a Japanese town most have never heard of, but I’m glad I was able to write it for my own sake.

“The iPod Reboot” — The Spectator

Millennial technology is back, baby. For various reasons, a segment of zoomers is returning to the gadgets and trends my generation experienced. I never gave up on the iPod though. I always valued having a dedicated music player on me as a detox from our always online 24/7 smartdevices which deliver an endless stream of notifications and dangerously addictive dopamine. In this piece for The Spectator, I wrote about why the iPod has returned, the enthusiast community that keeps it alive, and how it allows you to appreciate the music in your pocket much more.

“Japan’s populist pivot” — UnHerd

One of multiple articles I wrote this year that was aimed at correcting the sludge of fake news around Japan. A plucky populist party (try saying that five times fast) named Sanseito dominated international headlines which tried to frame the country as supposedly pivoting hard right a la MAGA or Reform, but I aimed to provide a more nuanced perspective. Hopefully it didn’t fall on deaf ears.

“Why Japanese People Still Can’t Speak English” — Foreign Perspectives

Many visitors to Japan are often baffled at the low level of English among Japanese people, but it turns out there are many factors contributing to this country’s linguistic separation from the Anglosphere. In this column for Foreign Perspectives, I broke down why Japanese people generally still can’t speak English and why this situation is unlikely to change anytime soon. From poor education methods to the fact that you really don’t need English to live in Japan, it’s been this way forever.

“Does the Lupin III series have a timeline?” — Lupin Central

A piece I did for free out of my love for the Lupin III. Lupin Central is a blog written by and produced for fans of Monkey Punch’s long-running franchise that shows no signs of stopping. With so many shows and films, I discussed the interesting question of if Lupin III has any semblance of continuity or a timeline. It was a pleasure to write this one because it was purely for fun.

“9/11 and Historical Memory” — Foreign Perspectives

In contrast, this piece I wrote for Foreign Perspectives the same month was the opposite of fun, but it was very important. Longtime subscribers will be aware of my interest in covering topics related to the September 11 terrorist attacks. On the 24th anniversary of 9/11 this year, I was able to visit New York City with my wife where we saw the official museum and memorial site in person. This article was about that experience and included some very moving photos I took myself. We’re now approaching 25 years since 9/11 happened, which makes it imperative that we continue to preserve historical memory of the events for future generations.

“Why Fake News About Japan is Spreading” — Foreign Perspectives

You could fill a book with all the fake news stories that are being spread about Japan online by people who don’t live here, but this piece was my attempt to summarize the main causes of the problem. Due to language barriers and social media sensationalism, so many are being fed a distorted image of Japan that simply does not match reality. It’s sadly a problem that I only see getting worse, but that also ties back to Japanese people not speaking English and being largely divorced from the discussions about this country taking place abroad. If you hear a story related to Japan that sounds too incredible or bizarre to be true, chances are it probably is.

“The Era of Immortality Is Here” — The Dispatch

I’m no Luddite, but the rapid adoption of AI technologies without any concern for their long-term societal consequences greatly disturbs me. In this piece for The Dispatch, I dove into the implications of companies “reviving” everyone from dead celebrities like Stan Lee to your own grandmother via AI and why this digital necromancy raises serious ethical issues. We’re only at the beginning of the tunnel, but at this rate there will be no end.

“Conservatives, Stop Bashing Video Games” — The Dispatch

Another article I wanted to write for a long time, but my pitch ironically got rejected by the very outlets whose readers I aimed to address. This only proves my central thesis: conservatives need to stop dismissing video games as a waste of time. Thankfully, The Dispatch was gracious enough to let me say my piece on why gaming is now becoming the dominant form of entertainment. Much of the political right apparently has a problem with this with how they frame video games and those who play them as some boogeyman responsible for all of society’s ills. That could not be further from the truth, but judging from the mostly positive responses I got, I’m confident that the general public’s perception of video games is changing for the good.

What I watched

Believe it or not, I thought 2025 was generally a better year for film than 2024. While Hollywood is still doing a ton of things wrong, they seem to currently be in a state of self-reflection after how much the pandemic and the SAG-AFTRA strikes affected their bottom line. I don’t think Netflix’s purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery will be good for the industry, but that’s currently too far away for us to really know what the consequences will be.

Regardless, I ended up going to the cinema almost every couple of weeks and saw over 200 films in total. I’ll also use this section to remind everyone that I’m active on Letterboxd where I post short reviews of everything I watch.

Honorable mentions:

I was pleasantly surprised by Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four: First Steps despite MCU fatigue. As I wrote in my review, Superman was fine despite my dislike of some of its creative choices. I will stick my neck out to defend TRON: Ares as an enjoyable popcorn flick that is just as silly and short on story as its predecessors even if by objective standards it isn’t a very good movie. Eddington was good, but tonally inconsistent and probably released too close to the political era it’s depicting. Predator: Badlands was fine, but this franchise along with Alien seems to have few tricks left up its sleeve. Sinners was overhyped. Here in Japan, I had a good time seeing Lupin III return to theaters via Takeshi Koike’s latest film, The Immortal Bloodline, though I’ll always prefer the more lighthearted stuff instead of its darker and grittier direction. Suzuki=Bakudan is a police procedural you’ve probably never heard of based on a bestselling novel you’ve also probably never heard of. Surprisingly thrilling and well-acted.

Late releases in Japan:

Japan often gets a lot of 2024 films later than the rest of the world, so I was late to the party on these. The Apprentice was a surprisingly poignant examination of Donald Trump’s rise before he became president and easily Sebastian Stan’s best performance of his career so far. September 5 is a thrilling dramatization of the 1972 Munich massacre and an effective tribute to old school analogue journalism. The Brutalist won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but Brady Corbet crafted a labor of love that pays homage to the best Hollywood epics and Adrien Brody deserved his Oscar. Nosferatu is a gorgeous update of Dracula. I liked Wicked despite generally not watching musicals and finding most of the cast rather annoying. I have no desire to watch The Substance again because of how disgusting it is, but it’s undeniably well-made and acted with its uncomfortable depiction of how we inevitably all lose our beauty with age.

TV shows I watched:

Not a huge TV guy due to the time commitment it usually takes, but Season 2 of Andor was easily one of the best things I’ve watched in a long time. See my review here. I also caught up on The Sympathizer (it’s better than the book because it cuts out the fat) and The Penguin (this somehow ended up as one of the best shows based on a comic book ever made). I also watched The Hollow Crown (it starts off as a good modern adaptation of Shakespeare, but becomes too disjointed by the end) and Das Boot (slow, but very effective). I’m currently showing my wife Monty Python’s Flying Circus for the first time, which surprisingly has a full Japanese Blu-ray release. The people who handled the translation of that series deserve a medal.

My top ten films of 2025:

10. Avatar: Fire and Ash — Dammit James Cameron, I want to hate your Avatar films, but I just can’t. They’re too beautifully made for me to be that bothered by their shallow stories and rather dull characters. Maybe I’ve succumbed to key-jangling, but I don’t think so. This was easily among the best experiences I had in a cinema all year and I appreciated its earnest themes around family (a rarity in Hollywood these days), so it sneaks into the top ten at the last minute. Well-played, Jimbo.

9. Bullet Train Explosion — Being a legacy sequel to The Bullet Train released in 1975, this has to be one of the longest gaps between two films. The original starring Ken Takakura, Sonny Chiba, and a huge cast of other major Japanese actors of the 1970s is a classic here, but sadly not so well known overseas. That’s a shame because Bullet Train Explosion is widely available via Netlfix and is greatly enhanced if you see it after its predecessor. It’s fascinating watching both to see how much Japan has changed over the last 50 years. Thrilling action and a compelling plot with some decent twists makes this one worth a look.

8. Ballerina — The John Wick spin-off I never knew I wanted. Similar to how Furiosa was sadly overlooked in relation to the greater Mad Max series, it definitely is not “woke” pandering or an inferior version of what came before. Ballerina adds more interesting lore to its established world, Ana de Armas did a good job as Eve, the Keanu Reeves cameo was entertaining, and the action is stellar.

7. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle — Could they not have come up with a better English translated title? That aside, the newest Demon Slayer was the biggest Japanese film of the year and dethroned… the last Demon Slayer as the highest-grossing Japanese film of all time. With expectedly stunning animation that never misses a beat, it did exactly what it needed to do as the big-budget adaptation of its respective manga chapter. I wouldn’t consider myself a super fan of the franchise as I always founded it to be a bit too shonen trope-y for my liking, but the incredible artwork and emotional flashback sequences won me over.

6. 28 Years Later — You’ll either love or hate this movie, but I applaud Danny Boyle for going outside of the box instead of repeating the same ground as the previous two movies. The first half of 28 Years Later is some of the most thrilling filmmaking I’ve seen in a long time, but the second half is where you’ll either buy what Boyle is selling or kick it to the curb in disbelief. I thought about this one for awhile, but I’ve come to the conclusion that his risk paid off since it’s never left my head in the months since. The upcoming sequel, The Bone Temple, could of course throw all of that away, but either way I enjoyed returning to this universe, albeit in an extremely unorthodox way.

5. F1 — The next Top Gun: Maverick-esque summer blockbuster we all needed. Pure, unadulterated adrenaline and great fun even if you do have to suspend your disbelief a bit considering Brad Pitt’s age. I wish we could have these kinds of “dad movies” at least once every year.

4. Weapons — Zack Cregger is to me inseparable from The Whitest Kids U’ Know, particularly his hilarious performance as Abraham Lincoln, but it turns out that he’s quite the accomplished director of serious stuff too. Weapons has an intriguing setup that continuously holds your attention and manages to be thoroughly creepy by the end. The less you know going in, the better. I’m not sure how that will affect subsequent rewatches of the film, but one thing’s for sure, Cregger is going places and he has a very promising post-comedy career indeed.

3. Black Bag — A big surprise from Steven Soderbergh who, despite being American, directed something that feels like it was ripped out of the classic era of British spy films and updated with modern technology. Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett are fantastic, as are the supporting cast featuring the likes of Tom Burke and Pierce Brosnan. I was reminded of a Harry Palmer film or John le Carré novel, the kind of low-key espionage story that keeps you invested purely because the writing is so brilliant. It’s a brisk 94 minutes too, being exactly the right length for this kind of narrative and never overstaying its welcome.

2. Kokuho — And now I’m contradicting myself with the next entry, which is a three-hour long film about kabuki theater. Now don’t go away, it’s more interesting than it sounds. Kokuho has gone on to be the biggest live-action Japanese film of the year and has sparked a ton of new interest in young people for Japan’s traditional theatrical arts. It’s an epic, sprawling story about the contrasting lives of two men who sacrifice everything to be the best of their craft while knowing that only one of them can truly be considered “the best” of all time. A lot of Japanese live-action movies these days are disposable fodder that appeal to the lowest common denominator, but works like Kokuho and other recent hits like Godzilla Minus One give the impression that things are slowly changing. Lee Sang-il is certainly among the best directors working in the industry, that’s for sure. Even Tom Cruise sang his praises of Kokuho, which gave it an even bigger boost on the international film festival circuit. Don’t miss it when it hopefully reaches a wider audience in 2026.

1. Frankenstein — Not everything he makes is a winner (I really do not like The Shape of Water), but Guillermo del Toro is responsible for my favorite film of 2025. His take on Frankenstein is one of the most frustrating stories of development hell in Hollywood history, and it ironically took Netflix to step in for it to get made at all. For all the things you can criticize the streaming giant for, sometimes they really do put their money where it matters. In any case, Frankenstein is the film del Toro was born to make. It embodies every theme he has explored in his career, particularly the fine line between monsters and men. While there are notable diversions from Mary Shelly’s novel that purists will undoubtedly take issue with, it’s the passion that counts and this film has it in every frame. Really glad that a local Kyoto cinema was playing it because the full visual spectacle of Frankenstein deserves far more than just your television screen.

   

Films I watched for the first time in 2025:

The Lost City of Z (2016) — Based on the incredible and tragic life of Percy Fawcett, this is arguably the last great classic adventure film Hollywood ever made as the genre has sadly largely become cast aside. Be sure to read the book by David Grann for the full story.

The Pianist (2002) — As someone whose father survived the Cultural Revolution by being a musician and given my own lifelong interest in Holocaust history, The Pianist had me hooked from start to finish. This is rightfully considered one of the greatest films ever made.

Loving Vincent (2017) — One of the most breathtaking and painstakingly drawn animated films that shocks you with every frame with its artistry. Damn shame that it’s overlooked and modern viewers will mistake it for AI due to the motion.

Used Cars (1980) — Very underrated comedy starring Kurt Russell that is absolutely ingenious with every joke setup and conversation.

Speed (1994) — Yes, it’s often made fun of as “The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down” starring Keanu Reeves, but Speed is one of the top thrillers of the 1990s for a reason. Despite only watching it for the first time this year, by reputation I always viewed it as a loose remake of The Bullet Train given the near-identical premise save for the vehicle used. Jan de Bont was friends with Ken Takakura, so I’m sure he saw it for inspiration. Disappointing he only had a very limited directing career after Speed.

Michael Clayton (2007) — Got around to this one because of Andor and just like that incredible show, watching Michael Clayton proves why Tony Gilroy is one of the greatest writers working in Hollywood today. All the parts come together perfectly by the end like a grand symphony.

Conspiracy (2001) — One of the most disturbing films ever made about the Nazis and the Holocaust despite not a single scene of bloodshed actually shown. Given everything that’s happening in the world today around antisemitism, Conspiracy needs to be seen by everyone to show how slaughter on a massive industrial scale was brought to reality.

The Naked Gun (1988) — Yes, it took me this long to see it and the other sequels with Police Squad. You already know why The Naked Gun is a classic. Even subtitled in Japanese, which is its own mindblowing achievement given the material, my wife couldn’t stop laughing with me.

The Man Who Would Be King (1975) — A “they don’t make them like they used to” adventure film produced during a time when even back then they weren’t making them like they used to. John Huston directs like he’s making a matinee thriller from decades prior, but that old fashioned spirit of heroism mixed in with the subtle cynicism of the 1970s makes The Man Who Would Be King truly special. Probably the best performances of Michael Caine and Sean Connery’s careers.

Always: Sunset on Third Street (2005) — Essential viewing if you want to understand where Takashi Yamazaki got his influences for Godzilla: Minus One. Always: Sunset on Third Street and its two sequels are postwar Showa-era Japan encapsulated as an intentionally idealistic and nostalgic trilogy. It’s unfortunately not so well-known overseas, but the Japanese Blu-rays contain English subtitles. Worth tracking down for sure.

Gods and Monsters (1998) — A rare biopic that shows the twilight years of someone who worked in Hollywood at the beginning of the 20th century, yet is still around to see the rapidly changing modernity around him long after his relevancy has passed. James Whale was a fascinating director, having been openly gay during a time when such things were unheard of in the film industry. Yet because he was responsible for Frankenstein and other hits, his work was championed by studio executives. One of Ian McKellen’s best performances, which can also be said for Brendan Fraser in a very underrated early role.

The Mummy (1999) — Speaking of Brendan Fraser, I finally got around to watching The Mummy trilogy. All of them are entertaining, yes I’ll even defend the third one to a point, but it’s really the first that everyone remembers and speaks highly of. Hollywood, please bring back the traditional adventure film. None of that horrible Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny crap.

A Room with a View (1985) — The positive inverse to Barry Lyndon’s pessimistic commentary on class divides in British society. Like Kubrick’s period piece, this is an utterly gorgeous film where every frame is a painting. Everyone here is fantastic, whether it’s Denholm Elliot and Maggie Smith as the stalwart veteran performers, or the then-up and coming young talent like Helena Bonham Carter and Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s also a rare leading part for Julian Sands, one of my favorite supporting actors who sadly died a couple of years ago in tragic circumstances.

There Will Be Blood (2007) — Yes, another classic I put off for too long. Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance lives up to the hype as one of the best of the century and Paul Dano is great no matter what Quentin Tarantino tells you. While a very good film, it is largely carried by the acting and not the script itself which I found somewhat barren. There Will Be Blood is not among my favorites at this stage, but I definitely respect and acknowledge its place in the canon.

True Lies (1994) — James Cameron’s last low stakes film before he became a director of absurdly expensive blockbusters, possibly for the rest of his life at this rate. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis have great chemistry of course, but True Lies sticks out to me as emblematic of when Hollywood action films could still be funny. And not in a constant ironic winking to the audience either. I hope we can one day see movies like these again where the silliness and camp are embraced, not discarded.

What I listened to

Wham! — Listened to their music peripherally for years due to “Last Christmas” and “Careless Whisper,” but checked them out properly for the first time this year. Despite their popularity back in the day, many forget they only had three studio albums. Not deep by any means, but fun pop regardless.

Al Bowlly — One of the most underrated crooners who set the groundwork for more well-known singers like Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. Most know him best for “Midnight, The Stars and You,” which provided the haunting ending piece for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. “Be Still My Heart,” “Close Your Eyes,” and “Guilty” are some of his other hits. It’s very old timey music by today’s standards, but succeeds at transporting you to a different era of more musical innocence. Due to age, most of his discography is in the public domain so it’s easy to find.

Chet Baker — Jazz heads like myself know Baker’s music well, but he sadly doesn’t have the same household name status among the public today like Miles Davis or John Coltrane. “You Don’t Know What Love Is” has seen a resurgence because of its appearance in Cyberpunk: 2077 so perhaps there’s some hope. Baker was an accomplished vocalist, but check out his excellent covers of jazz standards like “Autumn Leaves,” “Tangerine,” and “Have You Met Miss Jones?” for a taste of his stellar trumpet skills.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov — I constantly listened to “Scheherazade” throughout the year while working and studying. I think it’s one of the most accessible pieces of classical music ever composed and in many ways is an early precursor to film scores with its adventurous themes and approach to melodic storytelling. Many great versions, but I’m partial to the Berlin Philharmonic recording with Herbert von Karajan.

Dimitri Shostakovich — Another one of my favorite Russian composers. Shostakovich’s seventh symphony is another stalwart entry of my work and study playlists. Leonard Bernstein’s recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is legendary.

Leroy Anderson — “Sleigh Ride” is arguably the best holiday song ever composed because its longevity lasts far beyond Christmas and into the general winter season. Leroy Anderson was the king of light orchestral music with so many wonderfully crowd-pleasing compositions. “The Typewriter” is another classic, while “The Penny-Whistle Song” is a good example of Anderson’s penchant for memorable, feel-good melodies. The album Orchestral Favorites with Richard Hayman and His Orchestra comes recommended.

Akina Nakamori — One of the greatest J-pop queens of the 1980s. Her earliest work was closer to classical kayokyoku ballads, while she later took on a more “bad girl” image with her fashion and musical choices. “Joken Hansha,” “Into the Azure Night,” “Shojo A,” and “Jukkai” are some of my favorites and they’ve also provided good upbeat material for my jogging playlists.

Dead Kennedys — Playing the original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater for the first time naturally exposed me to some of the best musical acts of the 1990s. Apart from “Superman” by Goldfinger, which is basically the franchise’s anthem, I particularly enjoyed listening to the Dead Kennedys. “Police Truck” is great, while “Holiday in Cambodia” is something relevant for every age of clueless college campus activism. It might surprise you that I enjoy such edgy music given the other selections on this list, but I’ve always had wide tastes.

Eurythmics — This year I rewatched Nineteen Eighty-Four, the underrated cinematic adaptation of George Orwell’s dystopian novel. It’s exactly what I’d imagine the book brought to screen to look like. What stood out to me this time apart from its incredible visual language was the haunting soundtrack by Eurythmics. It’s pretty amusing in retrospect that a song like “Sexcrime” was played in the discotheques given the original source material, but “For The Love of Big Brother” is my favorite track on the album. With the film having actually been released in 1984, I view it to be a fascinating bridge between the era Orwell lived in to the modernity we find ourselves in now.

A Single Man — I watched this moving 1960s period drama starring Colin Firth at the end of 2024. It’s equally stunning soundtrack stuck with me throughout 2025. Abel Korzeniowski composed the majority of the score, but it also features contributions from Shigeru Umebayashi, who is probably best known today for Ghost of Tsushima. Korzeniowski’s “Stillness of the Mind” gives a taste for the lush orchestrations that appear throughout the album, while Umebayashi’s recurring motif for the protagonist features prominently. It’s a film and score I hope more people check out.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 — Haven’t played the video game enough to form an overall opinion yet, but I was immediately a fan of the music. The whole score over eight hours long, yet it’s remains of consistent quality with full orchestrations for the most important moments. Not to mention it’s completely free on YouTube! Hopefully I can give Clair Obscur a proper playthrough once I’m done with my doctoral program.

What I read

Last of the Blue and Gray by Richard A. Serrano — Fascinating book on the last Civil War veterans who lived well into the 20th century. It illustrates how memory of the conflict changed as all those who participated passed away, but it’s also about the countless fraud cases of old men pretending to be veterans for benefits.

First Blood by David Morrell — Where the Rambo franchise all started. There are a lot of differences from the more famous film adaptation starring Sylvester Stallone, which makes me hope that perhaps we’ll get a more novel-accurate miniseries one day. While the prose is straightforward, it provides nuance to both sides of the story as an overall commentary on generational divide during the Vietnam War.

Kubrick: An Odyssey by Robert. P. Kolker — The latest and perhaps most comprehensive biography on Stanley Kubrick. Everything you could have possibly wanted to know about one of the greatest filmmakers of all time is here in addition to newly-revealed details about his life and work. Cinephiles will be very pleased indeed.

The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin — A compelling thriller centering around a Nazi hunter who uncovers a wider conspiracy that could shake the foundation of future world events. Best to go into this one with as little prior knowledge as possible. Also check out the excellent film adaptation starring Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, and James Mason.

The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides — A splendid biography on Captain James Cook that is equal parts an exploration of one of the most important explorers in history as it is an examination of the tragic relationship the West would have with many indigenous peoples. Sides wisely does not editorialize the facts. Cook was no monster and unlike many of his contemporaries made an active attempt to understand the cultures of the societies he encountered. You will be thrilled by the adventures on display, but also left to contemplate the complex questions this book raises.

KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann — At nearly 900 pages, this is an exhaustive history of the Nazi concentration camp system and will probably be the definitive text on the subject for decades. The Holocaust is of course front and center, but Wachsmann peels back layers of history to show how the Third Reich employed campus to first imprison political dissidents and then later to attempt full-scale genocide of European Jews. I listened to the audiobook version, which is over 30 hours long, and had to space it out over a few weeks. Very difficult material that is both emotionally and mentally draining, but absolutely one of the most important books written this century.

Star Wars Legends: Tales of the Jedi Omnibus — No, not the animated series of the same name on Disney+. This is a complete collection of the 1990s Dark Horse comics taking place thousands of years before the original Star Wars trilogy. Its esoteric portrayal of the Force, the Jedi, and the Sith set the groundwork for lore that is still being used today under the current canon, but these stories are heavily reminiscent of Biblical tales with their epic scope and myth-like narratives. It’s arguably the closest Star Wars ever got to the fantasy elements George Lucas envisaged. Will do a more in-depth review in the future.

Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company by Alexander Freed — Who could have predicted that one of the best modern Star Wars stories would come from a novel that’s a tie-in to a video game most people hated on launch? It probably says more about Disney’s own misguided priorities with this franchise than anything else, but Battlefront: Twilight Company comes recommended to anyone who enjoyed the likes of Rogue One and Andor. Freed tells an old-school war story that adds more lore to the events of the original trilogy and emphasizes the sacrifices made by the grunts on the ground. A shame most will probably never read it due to overall apathy toward Star Wars at the moment.

Random by Penn Jillette — A hilarious novel written by the loudmouth part of the famous magician duo Penn & Teller. More prudish readers won’t appreciate its profanity and explicit content, but if you’re already familiar with the irreverent antics of Jillette like I’ve been for years such as with their television series Bullshit!, you’re in for a swell time. The audiobook read by Jillette himself makes the material all the more laugh out loud funny.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré — I’ve been reading le Carré’s work for the first time. After the previous two George Smiley novels, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is where most agree he hit his stride. It’s a darkly cynical spy thriller about the callous choices made by both sides of the Cold War that continues to be a great read even decades later. Looking forward to the rest of his bibliography.

What I played

Limbo — I replay this one every few years. Limbo is one of the classics of the golden age of indie video games. It creates a ton of effective atmosphere with so little, while the wordless story leaves room for tons of interpretation players are still debating 15 years later. Goes on sale often and it’s available on everything, so no excuse not to own it.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater — Played the original PS1 games for the first time. Very tough to get all the moves down correctly, but still tons of fun with a killer soundtrack. Hope to eventually play the sequels.

Scribblenauts — Was nostalgic to play this Nintendo DS classic of my childhood where you could conjure up any object (within age-appropriateness, of course!) to solve a plethora of puzzles. The concept is admittedly more interesting than its execution, but this is one of the most innovative video game concepts ever created and it provides hours of entertainment.

Wolfenstein 3D — Decided to replay the grandfather of first-person shooters, this time with the goal of 100% completion. I’ve only finished the first three chapters, but that was technically the full game release back in the day. Have to get to the rest and Spear of Destiny. It’s archaic and simple, but shooting Nazis never gets old. Nightdive Studios needs to give Wolfenstein 3D a full remaster because it’s long past due.

Tokimeki Memorial: Forever with You — Arguably the greatest dating simulator ever made.

Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties — Arguably the worst dating simulator ever made.

Mario Kart World — I still need to do my full write-up on the Nintendo Switch 2, but if you own the console, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have Mario Kart World. It’s not as polished or well-developed as Mario Kart 8, but that’s to be expected given how much time in the oven its predecessor got with nearly a decade of updates. World will inevitably improve and it’s already gotten better. With that said, I do wonder if this series is beginning to run out of steam. Having now done an open world, what else can Nintendo do next? An even bigger open world? As I’ll expand upon in my piece on the Switch 2, the Big N may have finally innovated themselves into a corner.

Harvester — A 1990s adventure title that’s dated in a lot of ways, but still one of the most effective commentaries on video game violence and American society’s fixation with violence as a whole. Whenever I have more time I’m hoping to do a column series on controversial video games. Harvester will definitely be one of the first I cover.

Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe — My wife and I played this one almost every day when we were visiting my family in Pittsburgh. It gives you all the fun you’ve come to expect from a standard Kirby platformer, but the multiplayer is great, the Deluxe edition adds tons of entertaining mini-games, and the later stages provide a good challenge. Needed this one after Harvester.

The Elder Scrolls: Arena — I’ve ironically not played any of The Elder Scrolls games apart from this one, but that’s because I have a penchant for starting at the beginning of franchises and I’m a sucker for archaic games. Yes, Arena is old, outdated, and for many will be a slog to play through. For me, it provides a good challenge and serves as a fascinating time capsule into the early beginnings of CRPGs. Still not close to finishing it yet, but I’m finally getting used to the mechanics and have been enjoying going on quests for loot.

Dragon Quest IV — Finally beat this one after having started it over 18 months ago. While I think Dragon Quest III is the better game overall due to pacing, this fourth entry has a ton of great stuff going for it and is particularly mindblowing considering its origins as a Famicom game. I plan on getting to Dragon Quest V in 2026, but there are a couple of other RPGs I’d like to play first.

Super Mario Sunshine — I played this sequel to Super Mario 64 on and off for over five years to reach 100% completion. Finally accomplished that horrible task earlier this month. It is indisputably the most broken game in the Super Mario franchise and never should have been released in the state it was. I love to hate it, but I will never touch Super Mario Sunshine ever again.

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Like most Chinese children during the Cultural Revolution, my father was mobilized to do manual labor.

For a brief period, he ended up working in a factory which required him to operate dangerous machinery. He nearly sliced the fingers off his right hand, but narrowly avoided permanent injury.

If he lost the use of his right hand, he never would have been able to hold a violin bow and take music lessons from his father.

If he did not learn music, he never would have been able to get a job at the Peking Opera as a violinist and earn a better living than most people around him.

If he did not join the Peking Opera, he never would have been able to enter the Central Conservatory of Music, China’s top music academy, when the Cultural Revolution had ended.

If he did not enter the Central Conservatory of Music, he never would have received a music scholarship from Yehudi Menuhin, one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century, and go to Europe to further his studies.

If he did not go to Europe, he never would have been able to go to Canada and the United States, where he met my mother and eventually became assistant concertmaster to the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

If none of that happened, I never would have been born and you would not be reading these words now.

Through his own resourcefulness and careful planning, my father was able to leave one of the worst places on earth and find a life of freedom in the West. I guess some of that must run in his family.

I supposedly had a Chinese great-grandfather who despite being illiterate, was able to walk into the nearest town and negotiate his way into becoming the wealthy manager of a construction company. The other great-grandfather was a chauffeur for the Japanese mayor of Shenyang during Japan’s occupation of Manchuria, secretly stealing fuel to sell on the black market while putting my grandmother and her sister through Japanese education which gave them a better lot in life. Other family members of my father’s generation became musicians to escape similarly difficult circumstances.

I can’t say that my own life has been anything close to as challenging, but I like to believe that my own mentality in seizing whatever opportunities I can find comes from what my father and his ancestors did. I’m reminded of that today on what would have been Dad’s 70th birthday, yet another one that we unfortunately can no longer spend together.

It’s approaching four years since my father passed away of colon cancer, and in many ways I probably still haven’t completely come to terms with it.

In September 2020, I traveled back to Pittsburgh from Kyoto to be with Dad after his illness suddenly worsened and we all thought the end was near. It was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when international travel was anything but easy. The convoluted rules of border entry and restrictions on domestic transportation in Japan necessitated a roundabout route through Europe, which only increased the cost and time it would take to reach my family in the United States.

A lot of it is a blur to me. The amount of emotional weight I felt from both the imminent passing of my father and the overall dreariness of having to go through empty airports at redeye times in the middle of a global pandemic is an experience I would not wish on my worst enemies. But I dealt with it the same way I do with all trying situations: focus on the end goal and treat everything unpleasant along the way as necessary inconveniences.

I don’t have to be the first to tell you that the United States in 2020 was hardly a happy country. We talk about political and social polarization now, but I don’t think any of it holds a candle to how unhealthy of a country America was four years ago both metaphorically and literally. Yet there I was, visiting an unhealthy country to visit an unhealthy family member. It was hardly an auspicious homecoming, but I knew it was now or never to see my father while he was still conscious and able to speak.

Like millions of people who have witnessed family members slowly die of cancer, I too had to go through the motions of seeing someone once so healthy and full of life slowly wither away into nothingness. Of course, cancer is cruelest when it gives you a false sense of hope. There are days when the person is able to summon just enough energy to go outside for a walk or to eat a meal normally with everyone else. You almost, almost think that perhaps they have a shot at beating this. But then you are quickly reminded the following day that such hope is an illusion. They remain bedridden from morning to evening, and all you can do is make the dwindling remainder of their time as comfortable as possible.

That was the routine I experienced in the roughly two months I spent with my father. Me and my brother did our best to help around the house with chores like trimming the hedges and picking up leaves. When we were kids, it was work we’d both dread doing, but at that point I think we just wanted something to do which could provide a sense of order and control. It may have been the emotional equivalent of rearranging chairs on the deck of the Titanic, but there was some meaning to it. After Dad passed away, the house would be sold. It was thus the last time I would ever step foot there and relive the moments of my childhood.

One of the most painful moments of my sojourn was being with my father and his relatives. I have an elderly aunt and uncle from China who have lived in Pittsburgh for over two decades, and they were also joined by my grandmother. Because I was there, we all decided to be together one final time before I would have to return to Japan. In typical Chinese tradition, best seen in the heartbreaking 2019 film The Farewell, they decided to not tell my grandmother about my father’s cancer until the very end.

Nai Nai was in her 90s and dealing with mental decline, but even she could understand what was happening. While I unfortunately never learned to speak Mandarin Chinese owing to my English-only upbringing, Japanese was the one language we could communicate in. For as long as I live, I will never forget the saddened look on her face as she told me that something was wrong with my father. I simply told her, “I know,” and left it at that. Further words were no longer necessary. She would go on to outlive my father by over a year, passing away at the age of 96 in 2022.

We all believed that Dad would pass away while I was there, but that did not happen. I had to make the painful decision to leave at the end of October because I was in the middle of my master’s program in Kyoto and applying to continue on to a PhD. I was already taking a considerable amount of time away, and missing the interview deadlines for the doctoral course was not an option. So we had to part when my father was still alive, and even now I often wonder if it was the right choice to make.

At the same time, we said goodbye when he was conscious and lucid enough to still speak like his old self. My family who had to take care of him until the very end had it much worse because they had to witness him lose the ability to eat, move, and eventually speak. He fought on through his 66th birthday in November until January 20, 2021, which was far longer than any of us ever thought. On his last day, I had to give my farewell over video call separated by a time zone 14 hours away. It was a devastating experience that I don’t think I can even properly put into words here, but what I saw of my father’s final diminished condition was a reminder that life truly is finite and that we are all on borrowed time. The one solace was that we had been sure to leave nothing unsaid before reaching this sad coda.

Before I returned to Japan, my brother and I recorded a few hours of conversations with Dad about his upbringing in Cultural Revolution-era China and his journey through life which eventually brought him to the United States. They were stories we had heard many times, but we wanted to preserve them for posterity. Those recordings exist in a Google Drive folder that I have not touched in over four years. Even now, I don’t feel mentally ready to reopen them and deal with the inevitable emotional heaviness they would create. Part of me hopes that they can form the basis for a future book project, but unfortunately my main connection to China died with my father.

I’ve often written about feeling like an eternal outsider throughout most of my life, but that holds especially true with the Chinese side of me. I have never been to China and I was never raised to speak Mandarin. There is no practical way for me to academically research the stories my father told me because I have no way of getting in touch with any of his surviving relatives in China nor would I be able to communicate with them even if I could. If I were to go to China I would feel like an utter foreigner and my history of publicly criticizing the CCP is not worth the risk, even if it’s probably low.

Hatred for the CCP though is something my father always carried with him. He naturalized as a U.S. citizen over a decade ago and truly embraced his newfound American identity toward the end of his life. Despite initially believing that China was on the right path of economic reform after the Cold War ended, Xi Jinping’s pivot to greater authoritarianism and actions toward Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan utterly sickened him. He would regularly tell me that he thought the current leadership was bringing China back to the Cultural Revolution he had escaped. Amusingly, he became more political as time went on and was more or less a Trump supporter because he believed that such an American leader would be the best way to punish the CCP as hard as possible.

I was wistful during the recent 2024 election, not necessarily because Trump had won, but because I was reminded of the conversations I used to have with my father shortly before he passed away. I can’t say that I completely agreed with everything he believed in, but Dad always thought deeply about political and historical issues despite having little formal education himself. In the end, he achieved the American Dream and constantly told me that the U.S. was the greatest country in the world. At the same time, he was always supportive of my choice to live in Japan, but would remind me to never forget where I came from.

I haven’t. Though I’ve previously written about why I’ve ultimately decided to live in Japan over the United States, I’m only here because of what my father achieved before me. The decisions he made are what allowed me to have the resources and circumstances to go to the other side of the world and get a start far better than most. While my life has been far easier overall, like Dad I was awarded a scholarship to study abroad and had to deal with the challenges of adapting to a different culture.

As a kid I would often make fun of Dad’s imperfect English and occasional lack of understanding of American culture, but now I’m finding myself in the same situation. Eventually I’ll have children who will speak far better Japanese than me because they will be raised completely in this culture. As Bane tells Batman in The Dark Knight Rises, “You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it.” It’s a cycle that anyone who has planted their roots in another country will surely understand. I’m just carrying on that legacy.

As typical of most Chinese parents, Dad would always tell me to work hard, focus on studying, drink less, and exercise more. When I was younger I would often fail to understand why he was tougher on me than my mother was, but I now realize that it was always because he had my best interests in mind and wanted me to take advantage of the opportunities he never had. When he saw that I was doing alright for myself in Japan, I think he slowly realized that his work was done. He lived long enough to see me get accepted into my current doctoral program, which I was grateful for.

There are plenty of times when I wish Dad could still give me advice, and indeed the biggest tragedy is that he is no longer around to see my most important milestones. He didn’t live to see me complete my master’s, get married, or become a professional freelance journalist. He won’t be around to meet the children I hope to have one day with my wife or see where my academic career goes. At the same time, one of the last things he ever told me was, “I’m not worried about you.” That’s about the highest praise one could ever get from an Asian parent and I continue to keep in mind everything he imparted on me.

I also have decades of recordings from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra to return to if I ever want Dad to be with me again in spirit. Look up any videos of the PSO uploaded to YouTube before the pandemic and chances are you’ll see my father sitting in third or fourth chair leading the first violin section. It’s the best preservation of someone’s memory one could ever have asked for. While I never continued on with the violin, readers of my weekly column Bonus Perspectives will also know that I regularly recommend classical music and aim to convey its artistic importance to readers. That lifelong appreciation for music a hundred percent comes from my father.

Besides being assistant concertmaster for the Pittsburgh Symphony, Dad taught violin lessons to dozens of students over the years. I occasionally get messages from his former pupils who all tell me the same thing: my father always pushed you to be better than you thought you could be. Some students became professional musicians, while others like me retired from playing the violin and went into something else. Either way, what he taught still applied to all walks of life. The only person who can prevent you from achieving your goals is yourself.

On what would have been my father Hong-Guang Jia’s 70th birthday, I look back on the time we were fortunate enough to spend together. It would have been ideal if he had stayed on for another decade or two, but it was a fulfilled life with no regrets. Tonight I will raise my wine glass in Dad’s honor and keep on living. It’s what he would have wanted me to do above all else.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far as a new reader or free subscriber, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

2023 was by far my most productive year when it came to writing.

As we reach the end of what was yet another turbulent twelve months for this spinning globe of ours, I would like to take the time to reflect upon what I was able to achieve with my words.

This year was the maiden voyage of Foreign Perspectives, a Substack which thanks to your support has achieved over 300 subscribers since I kickstarted my newsletter in May. For a publication that was started completely from scratch, I’m proud to have hit the ground running with a strong start.

Some of you have been generous enough to opt for a paid subscription, which I am beyond grateful for. Your patronage has been a major factor in me regularly updating Foreign Perspectives with in-depth articles that get deep into the woods of esoteric topics. My paid subscribers have allowed me to keep the lights on, as well as afford access to non-free research materials which go toward writing better pieces.

Going into 2024, I hope to see the continued growth of this Substack and with your help in spreading the word, I’m confident it will happen. Whether you are a free or paid subscriber, allow me to extend my utmost gratitude and appreciation as we close off the year. Foreign Perspectives would not exist without you.

For my final Substack article of 2023, I will be reposting links to ten of my favorite pieces I wrote this year both here and elsewhere with some retrospective thoughts.

Thank you so much for your support, and I hope to continue this journey into foreign territory with you all for many more years to come!

Kenneth Rowe, North Korean pilot who defected in Soviet plane, dies at 90

My first piece of 2023 was an obituary published at NK News for Kenneth Rowe, a North Korean pilot who defected to the West in the chaotic aftermath of the Korean War.

Born as No Kum-sok on Jan. 10, 1932 on the Korean Peninsula when it was part of the Japanese Empire, Rowe lived an incredible life that was symbolic of how much desire for freedom can lead people to escape from the worst situations. Finding himself in North Korea after the post-WWII division of the peninsula, he dreamed of leaving Kim Il Sung’s totalitarian communist dictatorship and eventually found his way to the United States.

Kenneth Rowe passed away at the end of 2022, but it wasn’t reported on until early January 2023. With my late father having lived through the Chinese Cultural Revolution, I related to Rowe’s story a lot and always found his life to be profoundly inspiring.

Read it here.

Shinzo Abe’s posthumous memoir sheds light on North Korea diplomacy and Trump

Shinzo Abe’s assassination in the summer of 2022 shocked the world, but the debate over his legacy both at home and abroad continues to rage on.

A posthumous memoir containing the former Japanese prime minister’s thoughts on subjects ranging from North Korea to Donald Trump was released early this year in Japan. There are some revealing insights that prove to be fascinating regardless if you agreed with Abe’s political views or not.

My Japanese language skills came in handy when I wrote a full analysis of the book for NK News in February. It remains unclear if a full English translation will come out, but until then I hope my article proves useful.

Read it here.

Ally to enemy: A Venezuelan poet’s brutal 7-year ordeal in North Korean prison

One of my aims with NK News pieces is to bring more attention to obscure aspects and individuals related to North Korea. That’s why I was glad that I had the opportunity to write about Ali Lameda, a Venezuelan poet who found himself a prisoner of the Kim regime in the 1970s.

Previously a dedicated communist who voluntarily moved to the DPRK to translate propaganda, Lameda ended up experiencing the worst of North Korea’s concentration camp system for seven years. Despite his horrific ordeal, most have forgotten about Lameda’s story and no article before mine existed which documented his life in great detail.

What happened to Ali Lameda illustrates how quickly authoritarian regimes can turn against even their most loyal supporters.

Read it here.

A Georgia town lays a Korean War veteran to rest, over 70 years after his death

Despite the enormous human cost of the Korean War and the geopolitical implications it still has, most Americans today know very little about it. The conflict is often dubbed "The Forgotten War,” but even more sadly lost to time are the hundreds of American soldiers whose remains were never recovered.

The family of Luther Herschel Story, however, finally received closure decades later in 2023 after the U.S. government successfully identified his remains and laid him to rest in Americus, Georgia. Story was killed in action on Sept. 1, 1950 while saving the lives of his fellow soldiers against approaching North Korean forces, which he later received a posthumous Medal of Honor for.

I was able to track down Story’s niece and closest surviving relative Judy Wade, who was kind enough to provide me with important insights for this NK News feature.

Read it here.

Revisiting "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles"

My time as social media editor for NK News came to a close in mid-2023 (though I remain a freelance article contributor), which is around the time I decided to officially launch Foreign Perspectives. I uploaded a few pieces in May, but my article on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles published the following month was my first long-form Substack feature and provided the template for later deep-dives.

It’s no secret that I strongly disliked Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (which you can also read my full thoughts on here), but that disappointment largely stemmed from the fact The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles television series showed how much better further adventures around the character could be. Yet despite being a labor of love from George Lucas and a beautifully-made expansive story that fleshed out the origins of Indiana Jones, Chronicles is seldom discussed today.

I extensively researched the premise, history, lore, and extended media around this criminally overlooked series in an attempt to give it the recognition it deserves. If I convinced even one person to check out The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, this piece will have achieved its purpose.

Read it here.

No, "Metal Gear Solid" Doesn't Need a Content Warning

One of my greatest passions is appreciating and understanding art, especially when it comes to important works from the past. Many still debate whether or not video games count as art, but regardless of what side you fall on, there is little doubt that they are now media just as culturally important as films and novels.

Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear series finally returned in 2023 via a new collection that brought the original trilogy of Solid games to modern platforms, but with a jarring developer-imposed message warning of “outdated expressions and themes.”

My opinion piece published on this Substack argued for why such content advisories are completely unnecessary for Metal Gear and ironically go against the core ideas of the games. It ended up being one of my most-viewed articles on Foreign Perspectives, and I intend to write more op-eds on similar topics in 2024.

Read it here.

The Search for 9/11 Lost Media

If there was one topic that fascinated me which bordered on obsession this year, it was the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. I spent most of the summer reading as many books and watching as many documentaries on 9/11 as I could in order to better understand what is still probably the most monumental event of the 21st century.

But where did the interest come from? From my other obsession: lost media. Despite often being called the most photographed event in American history, there is no footage of what went on inside the towers above the impact sites, while some of the more gruesome photos and videos taken on that day remain locked away in government vaults.

While smartphones and social media allow us to see events like the war in Ukraine in real time, their absence in 2001 meant that much of what happened during 9/11 remains up to the imagination. My Substack article dove into what lost media possibly exists and the ethical questions around releasing it to the public. One of my best works from this year.

Read it here.

Turning pizza Japanese

One of my proudest achievements of 2023 was landing a regular freelance gig with The Spectator, the world’s oldest magazine still in publication. My friend Ross Anderson (who also runs a Substack that I highly recommend) became Life Editor at the world edition of the publication, and I’m now in a position where most of what I pitch gets accepted thanks to him.

In one of my first pieces, I wrote a feature on the history of pizza in Japan. Most don’t associate the dish with the Land of the Rising Sun, but my piece argued for a second look at some of the unique offerings available here. It also was published in the October 2023 print edition of The Spectator World, meaning that the work of yours truly is now being read from newsstands and fine bookstores everywhere. I’ll be taking my Pulitzer now.

Read it here.

When Theodore Roosevelt Almost Died in the Jungles of Brazil

At over 8,000 words, my piece on Theodore Roosevelt’s post-presidential trip to the jungles of Brazil which nearly killed him was easily the longest and most-researched thing I did this year. That unfortunately did not translate into very high views compared to my shorter pieces, but I remain proud of it nonetheless.

While the U.S. has never had a president like T.R. in the century since his death, I think his time spent outside of the White House is endlessly more fascinating. We’re talking about a man who did everything from leading the Rough Riders on the battlefields of Cuba against the Spanish Army to going on a lavish African safari where he catalogued hundreds of flora and fauna.

Yet Roosevelt’s voyage to the Amazon jungle in 1913-14 to chart an unknown river is often regulated to just a footnote, and most Americans have no idea how close he came to death. The other half of this incredible story revolves around Colonel Cândido Rondon, a figure pivotal to Brazilian history who I wanted to bring more attention to.

While many associate me with articles related to Japan and North Korea, Foreign Perspectives is intended to take readers on a trip across the world through covering a wide variety of topics. This lengthy piece on Theodore Roosevelt is probably the best representation of that goal, and I hope you’ll give it a look. Grab a snack for the ride.

Read it here.

The Americans who defected to North Korea

There are plenty more pieces I would have liked to include in this retrospective, but since ten is a nice round number, I’ll leave you with my latest article for The Spectator which was published online this month and will be in the January 2024 print issue (again, where’s that Pulitzer!?).

While North Korea took a backseat in global headlines this year compared to events unfolding in Ukraine and Gaza, one of the top stories related to the hermit kingdom was the curious case of U.S. Army soldier Travis King and his unexpected defection across the DMZ.

Those less familiar with North Korean history were baffled at King’s hair-brained decision to flee into the most totalitarian country on earth, but he was actually far from the first to do so. While the 23-year-old was later deported to the U.S. with relative speed, previous American soldiers who defected to the DPRK ended up spending years and sometimes even decades as propaganda tools of the Kim regime.

I ended up writing this piece for The Spectator because my friend James Fretwell already covered this subject before I did at NK News, but either way I’m glad that more will learn of these forgotten Cold War tales.

Read it here.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you enjoyed any of the articles featured here, consider a monthly or annual paid subscription to support the work I do. Your patronage is greatly appreciated. See you in 2024!

Out of the many geopolitical issues affecting the world at the moment, few are likely giving much thought to North Korea.

The days of “fire and fury” in 2017 and U.S. President Donald Trump’s subsequent meetings with Kim Jong Un once flooded international headlines, but this stands in sharp contrast to the lack of resonance the DPRK appears to have with the public today.

Trump failing to reach a breakthrough with Kim in 2019 essentially ended Washington’s diplomatic overtures toward Pyongyang with neither side getting what they wanted.

Subsequent events such as the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 understandably drew far greater attention, while North Korea continued to suffer the consequences of its self-imposed isolation due to COVID-19.

And yet if you’re someone who is a regular North Korea watcher like me, you’d know that Kim Jong Un never went anywhere.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down for a full conversation on current events in Northeast Asia with Pyotr Kurzin, host of the geopolitical talk show “The Global Gambit” on YouTube.

Our talk initially began with a discussion on the recent trilateral summit between the U.S., Japan, and South Korea held at Camp David and its significance, but we gradually expanded the focus to its implications for general international security in this part of the world.

From a big picture perspective, North Korea is just one aspect in everything that is going on. The U.S. State Department believes that Pyongyang is assisting Russia by supplying weapons and ammunition, though this has yet to be officially seen on the battlefield.

The DPRK is now one of Russia’s only friends left on the global stage. It is one of the few countries to recognize the territory Vladimir Putin illegally annexed, while Defense Minister Shoigu’s appearance at Pyongyang’s latest military parade is yet another indication of their growing ties.

If you are interested in learning more, I highly recommend listening to the conversation I had on “The Global Gambit.” I found Pyotr to be a very welcoming and curious host, and I previously followed him on Twitter for his commentary on the war in Ukraine. His half-English, half-Russian background gives him a more direct perspective than most and I believe his channel is worth subscribing to.

Listen to our conversation here:

This piece is briefer than what I normally post on Foreign Perspectives, but there will occasionally be more like it when I make appearances on YouTube channels and podcasts.

Given my following on Twitter and the wide variety of topics I cover, I sometimes get invited to various programs. Substack allows me to add further context to these conversations and I believe most who read my articles will also probably be interested in hearing more.

With that bit of housekeeping out of the way, let me take this opportunity to thank all those who have subscribed to Foreign Perspectives for their support! Whether you are a free subscriber or a paid one, your interest in my work is always greatly appreciated.

In addition to what I write here, I now also have freelance gigs at NK News, Korea Pro, Lost in Cult, and The Spectator. I did quite a bit of traveling this summer, and things have been quite busy as I prepare to begin another semester of my PhD program. Much of where I went provided interesting content for future pieces though, so stay tuned. I’m still aiming to do roughly one new article here at Foreign Perspectives a week, but it typically depends on how in-depth I end up covering a subject.

I’m very pleased with the readership growth of this site I’ve seen so far and hope that it continues with the many pieces I have planned. Thanks again and please spread the word!

-Oliver Jia