Why Germany’s far-right electoral bounce is just an affirmation of an ancient divide

Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz (pictured), is ripping up the script so quickly that we scribblers can hardly keep pace. In early March, there was the double bazooka of €100bn each for defence and infrastructure; a few days later, he raised us “whatever it takes”. Goodbye, the sacred “debt brake” – and about time. As I said on the opening page of my book The Shortest History of Germany, published in 2017, Europe’s largest economy needs to start acting like a great power at the heart of the West. Eight years later, this call has become an SOS. But what about the German federal election at the end of February? Do we really want to be led by a nation in which Elon Musk’s beloved Alternative for Germany (AFD) is the second-largest parliamentary party? To misquote Barack Obama: yes, we do. To understand this, we need to understand why the AFD is not the threat to German democracy that many make it out to be. After the election, a widely circulated map showed what the outcome of the vote would have been if Germany had a first-past-the-post system like the UK: it exactly mirrored the Cold War division between east and west. 

Many people blame West German arrogance after reunification for the far-right’s triumph in the country’s east. This is just the domestic German version of the Putin-is-only-aggressive-because-Nato-provoked-him shtick. The truth is that the electorate in the east has chosen authoritarian, anti-liberal parties ever since it got the vote: first the Prussian Conservatives before the First World War, then the German National People’s Party (DNVP), then the Nazi Party. Indeed, in 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor, he only ever got within distant sight of a national majority (43.9 per cent) because he piled up huge votes in eastern Germany. And he only made it over the 50 per cent threshold thanks to the 8 per cent of the DNVP, which was also much stronger in the east and formed an important part of the so-called “Hitler coalition”. 

And therein lies the truth about Germany: the east is unique because it has always had completely different priorities to the west, being far younger and colonial in origin. When, in 1198, Germans took the small Slavic fishing villages next to what we now call Berlin, Köln, Mainz, Bonn and Frankfurt were 1,200-year-old, Roman-founded cities at the heart of western Europe. For the Germans in the east, though, the story, through the Teutonic knights, Frederick the Great and the Prussian General Staff, up to the Hitler-Stalin pact and Operation Barbarossa, was the same: keep peace with the Slavs when they seem too strong; crush them if you get the chance. And like William Faulkner said, “The past is never dead; it’s not even past.” Anyone who lived in the German Democratic Republic experienced the final humiliation in this 900-year battle: occupation by the Red Army. Different histories; different people.

So all that actually happened in February is that eastern Germany voted as it always has. The consolation is that the region is now much smaller than in 1933. Indeed, provided that the west holds its nerve, the east can vote however it wants to. Western Germans can forget the optimistic vision of national near-consensus and get used to seeing Germany like the US: a country with almost immoveable red and blue states. Democracy is a fight. So bring on that double bazooka, Herr Kanzler, or whatever it takes. And please use that €500bn infrastructure spending in the West. Taxpayers there have sent more than €2trn to the East since 1990 and it hasn’t changed a thing; because it can’t.

Hawes is the author of several books, including ‘The Shortest History of Germany’.

How broadcaster Najwa Shihab became one of Indonesia’s most important voices

As digital technology transforms the media landscape, more and more respected broadcasters are swapping major networks for Youtube shows, podcasts and newsletters. Southeast Asia is home to some of the boldest disruptors. Jakarta-based news anchor Najwa Shihab left news channel Metro TV in 2017 to set up her own media company, Narasi, with two former colleagues. Eight years later, this trio of women have turned one talk show and Shihab’s reputation for grilling the country’s top politicians into a nationwide news platform that employs 170 people. 

“The definition of mainstream media has shifted in Indonesia,” Shihab tells Monocle from Narasi’s headquarters inside Intiland Tower, a brutalist building in central Jakarta. “If I could turn back the clock, I wish I would have started [Narasi] earlier.” Born in South Sulawesi, Najwa Shihab is the host of Mata Najwa (Najwa’s Eye). The long-running current affairs programme began in 2009 on Indonesia’s first news channel, Metro TV. The show left with Shihab and, since then, Mata Najwa has millions of views on Youtube and filled football stadiums for live debates on issues such as female empowerment. One of the most infamous episodes featured an “empty chair” interview with Indonesia’s minister of health that highlighted his inaction during the coronavirus pandemic and led to him being replaced.

Mata Najwa’s success has allowed Shihab to build up a newsroom of reporters trained in traditional journalism. Narasi’s head of news has full editorial control of the website and unlike many other stations in Indonesia, which are often controlled by tycoons with political ties, aims both barrels at the rich and powerful. In 2022 a cyber-attack brought down its website around the time when the news division was reporting on the investigation of a powerful two-star general accused of murdering his bodyguard. When computer screens came back on, a warning message appeared: “Be silent or die.” But that threat was water off a duck’s back for Shihab; her main concern is for the future of her industry. “One of the biggest challenges for professional journalists in the digital era is adhering to the code of ethics and the law, while content creators don’t have any restrictions,” she says. 

When big names want to talk to Indonesia’s vast population of 285 million people, Mata Najwa gets the exclusive. In February, Shihab conducted the only sit-down interview with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, during his first state visit to Indonesia in a decade. As Erdogan sat opposite her, calmly lambasting US president Donald Trump’s Gaza strategy, he was following in the footsteps of Coldplay’s Chris Martin and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Dutch former footballer Patrick Kluivert gave his first interview to Shihab a day after landing in Jakarta to become manager of Indonesia’s national team. 

This year, Shihab is aiming for one big exclusive a month. Mata Najwa went out weekly for more than a decade, but the workload was taking its toll on the 47-year-old host, whose time is in demand. Events are Narasi’s second-biggest revenue stream after content and the busy programme includes university campus tours, courses on journalism, festivals and running clubs led by Shihab, a keen runner. An English-language version of Narasi is also in the pipeline, beginning later this year with reports co-produced with media companies from the region.

The daughter of a well-known Muslim cleric, Shihab became a journalist by “accident”. Privately owned TV stations were springing up in Indonesia after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998 and a young law undergraduate looking for a distraction from writing her thesis applied for an internship. “Those three months changed the entire course of my life,” says Shihab, fondly recalling asking then UN secretary-general Kofi Annan a question at a press conference during that time. Her first full-time job was as a junior reporter at Metro TV. Shihab rose to national awareness for her emotional coverage of the 2004 tsunami, before going on to present the primetime news and getting her own talk show. 

She left television after 17 years to “be where the young people are” and have more editorial freedom in terms of formats and content. Episodes of Mata Najwa in recent years have covered coal pollution in Jakarta and the tribespeople living near the new capital, Nusantara. “The beauty of digital is that I can do a story when I want,” says Shihab. In 2022 she spent six days filming a documentary on the 20th anniversary of Timor-Leste’s independence, which has been viewed 18 million times. “We were shocked to see the overwhelming response to that documentary,” she says. Fame is her main limitation now; millions of Indonesians watch Shihab on their phones and stop her on the streets for photographs. An “occupational hazard”, she says.

Narasi has also given Shihab the space to show a different side of her. Shihab & Shihab is a series of conversations between Shihab and her father that airs every day during Ramadan, while families wait for the Iftar evening meal. “It’s a daughter asking her father about religious and contemporary issues from the point of view of the Qur’an and moderate Islam,” says Shihab, who comes under attacks online for not wearing a hijab, a personal choice which is increasingly uncommon as Indonesia becomes more conservative. “The key word here is moderate,” she says. 

Shihab ends every episode of Mata Najwa on a positive note. “It’s important to have optimism but I define optimism as being consistent and staying true to the process,” she says. “If we see something good, we will defend it. If we see something bad, we will fight it.”

On the defensive: Europe must co-ordinate its defence procurement to avoid past mistakes

European defence stocks are booming. In the first quarters of 2025, indices such as the Stoxx 600 added more than $100bn (€92bn) in market value. This is down to the start of a massive rearmament programme intended to compensate for the perceived loss of US security guarantees. But how does Europe, and particularly the EU, avoid repeating the mistakes of the past? The European Commission estimates that a lack of intracontinental co-operation costs the bloc up to €100bn a year.

Due to a diverse range of suppliers, the continent’s militaries often possess non-interoperable munitions. Recent data suggests that this is shifting – the number of key weapon systems in production is decreasing. However, national governments have historically procured materiel independently, often favouring their domestic industries. While politically expedient, this fragmented approach has resulted in the duplication of efforts and inflated costs. In this context, Europe’s current defence build-up can be understood as both an evolution and a revolution in the continent’s approach to security co-operation. Several mechanisms to incentivise joint procurement and reduce fragmentation, such as the European Defence Fund, are already in place. More recent initiatives, such as the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIP), have taken more concrete and ambitious steps. EDIP aims to pool defence procurement to ensure that, by 2030, 40 per cent of national defence budgets are directed towards pan-European programmes. It further envisions that EU nations will allocate 50 per cent of their defence procurement budgets within the bloc.

Yet the current wave of rearmament also marks a massive change in some long-standing defence investment paradigms. Several taboos have already been broken. In Germany, for instance, the country’s strict rules have been relaxed to allow defence expenditures of more than 1 per cent of GDP to be exempt from fiscal limits. At the EU level, there is a parallel push to ease broader spending regulations, clearing the way for unprecedented increases in defence budgets. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has proposed borrowing €800bn to finance air defence systems, missiles and drones. Combined with multi-billion-euro national packages in countries such as Germany, France, Poland and the Nordic states, this signals a decisive break from Europe’s traditionally fragmented, underfunded approach to defence. 

Avoiding inefficiencies, prioritising joint development and interoperability is critical. Otherwise, Europe risks repeating past mistakes: spending vast sums without achieving meaningful strategic autonomy. 

Grgic is Monocle’s security correspondent.

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Will Rodrigo Duterte be seen as a symbol of justice finally being carried out?

Rodrigo Duterte, who was president of the Philippines from 2016 to 2022, never made much effort to disguise his brutal “war on drugs”. As recently as last October, he testified to a Filipino investigation that, along with licensing police and paramilitaries to proceed as they pleased, he had personally directed an off-the-books squad of hit men, who he described as “gangsters”. If the prosecutors of the International Criminal Court (ICC), who in March charged Duterte with crimes against humanity and extradited him to The Hague, cannot make this one stick then they should seek alternative employment.

Duterte always justified the lurid violence of his admittedly popular crackdown on the Philippines’ drug trade by calling it war. But war is governed by laws as well. Duterte now awaits a hearing in September to determine if the case will go to trial. He is already 80 years old so this indictment might not necessitate a guilty verdict to effectively result in a life sentence. But his arrest is a welcome reminder that the world has not completely descended into a free-for-all, even if recent history might have given that impression. In the past few years alone, Russia has visited violence on a neighbouring country for no good reason; Israel, though provoked, has pounded Gaza to rubble; and the citizens of the US have re-elected to their presidency a convicted criminal. Yet the rule of law is hanging on. Russian president Vladimir Putin and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are wanted men: neither will ever be able to travel entirely unburdened by worry that someone at the other end might serve the arrest warrants issued by the ICC. Should Donald Trump not find a way to install himself as president-for-life, he could still be reacquainted with charges overhanging from his first term.

All of which might not seem much but it is not nothing: if Duterte’s incarceration prompts one despot to pause and consider that actions today can have consequences tomorrow, it might save lives. Back in 1998 former Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London by British police serving an Interpol warrant issued by a Spanish judge for crimes committed during his dictatorship two decades previously. The law needs not just a long arm but a long memory.

Andrew Mueller is the host of the ‘Foreign Desk’ on Monocle Radio.

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Beirut’s art scene is undergoing a revival. Here are 3 cultural institutions you should seek out

Lebanon’s cultural institutions have long existed in a hostile environment. Historically, the country’s weak state has hobbled public sector sponsorship of artistic production on the European model. Yet Beirut’s arts institutions persevere. Among the most robust are Metropolis, an arthouse cinema founded in 2006; the Arab Image Foundation (AIF), an artist-led photo-archiving project launched in 1997; and Metro al-Madina, a repertory theatre founded in 2012. These private initiatives have thrived despite state indifference and in defiance of Lebanon’s political, economic and security instability.

The years since 2019 have been trying for the city: financial collapse, the 2020 port explosion, the coronavirus pandemic, political stagnation and war. The crises have reduced many to penury and emigration. Lebanon’s haemorrhage of artists, experienced administrators and other cultural labourers has undermined organisations’ capacities and institutional memory. The support of local and international donors is more uncertain, while those who have stayed have had less money and leisure time. 

Yet, in stubborn optimism, Metropolis, AIF and Metro have each moved into new spaces during this time. When the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah ended the bombing of greater Beirut in November, their hopes were fuelled. Metropolis, AIF and Metro continue to face challenges but they share an unshakeable belief in the power of culture in times of crisis.

1.
The cinema
Putting arthouse film in the frame
Metropolis

“Metropolis is almost 19 years old but this is a new venue,” says Hania Mroué. “No matter how prepared you think you are, there are always things that you discover as you go.” Mroué started dancing professionally at 18, performing at the prestigious Caracalla Dance Theatre for 13 years. She later studied economics, then earned a diploma in cinema production. In 1999, Mroué co-founded a filmmaking co-operative and served as managing director of its Ayam Beirut al-Cinemaiyya (Beirut Cinema Days) festival. When asked how a dancer found herself running a film festival, she shrugs. “For the love of cinema.”

After five years without a proper location, thousands descended on the cinema’s new space on opening night in December last year. Among those to address the crowd were Hollywood star Cate Blanchett, French auteur Jacques Audiard and Lebanese director Nadine Labaki, who all sent video messages to express their support. Since then, Mroué’s 15-person team has been playing catch-up, hosting events programmed for a 2024 season severely truncated by the war. The reception has been strong, with mostly sold-out festival programmes. “It’s a diverse audience and very wide, age-wise,” says Mroué (pictured). “In general, the audience of arthouse cinemas across the world is ageing. That’s not the case in Beirut.”

Metropolis’s story began in July 2006, in the basement theatre of the Saroulla, a cinematic institution of pre-civil war Beirut. Its debut event was a run of that year’s Cannes’ Semaine de la Critique programme. A few hours after a sold-out opening, Beirut Airport was bombed – the start of a month-long war with Israel. While European guests fled via Damascus, young people from displaced families now sheltering in the theatre came to watch Metropolis’s projections. Two years later the cinema migrated to a two-screen theatre and a business partnership with Empire, a Beirut-based regional cinema and distribution chain. “It allowed us to grow,” Mroué said in 2020. “It gave us access to a beautiful cinema and allowed us to release many Lebanese and Arab films in other commercial cinemas.”

Metropolis also partnered with international film industry bodies to create workshops and training platforms for the region’s young film professionals and set up outreach programmes to bring cinema to students in Lebanon, including youngsters in refugee camps. It established Cinematheque Beirut – a Wikipedia-style online archive for the region’s neglected cinema heritage – and created an independent film distribution company.

When political demonstrations erupted in October 2019, the cinema joined other Beirut arts institutions in expressing solidarity with a general strike. But when Metropolis wanted to resume programming, Empire shuttered the cinema in January 2020. Mroué’s team continued as much of its work as possible without a location. And, slowly, Mroué started gathering support for a purpose-built cinema from international, regional and domestic institutions including European embassies, cultural centres and film platforms, foundations and distributors.

The newest iteration sits in Mar Mikhael, a two-hall structure with an outdoor projection area. In April, the venue will host a new festival focusing on the cinema of the Global South. “We’re gathering international filmmakers who work with the same constraints as the Arab world: censorship, lack of support and infrastructure,” says Mroué. “It’ll be interesting to see how they deal with these challenges and still manage to create wonderful films.”

2.
The archive
Preserving the image of the Middle East
Arab Image Foundation

Rana Nasser Eddin is anxious to get back to normal operations. The Arab Image Foundation (AIF) director is awaiting the delivery from Kirkuk of Kurdish photographer Ramazan Zamdar’s collection of glass photographic plates dating from the 1930s to the 1980s. “In his studio photography, Zamdar used glass plate technology long after the film revolution,” says Nasser Eddin.

Six months after AIF opened the doors to its new premises in March 2024, warplanes began targeting locations across greater Beirut, delaying the shipment of the collection. “Beirut airport was functional,” says Nasser Eddin.“But no art shipper was willing to transport 13,000 glass plates to a place that’s being bombed.” The foundation activated emergency protocols, which involved packing and securing its collections and paper archive while preparing evacuation plans.

Co-founded by Akram Zaatari, Fouad Elkoury and Samer Modad, AIF is a unique project: a resource for the critical discussion of archival practices and a collection of photographic objects from the MENA region. With the Zamdar collection, the foundation will have approximately 600,000 objects from 308 collections, dating from the 1860s through to the 1990s and spanning 50 countries. Beirut’s port blast ruined the foundation’s previous offices – a cramped flat 300 metres from the explosion – but the collection emerged intact.

The foundation now nests in a three-story suite of rooms in Beirut’s Aresco Center, a short stroll from Lebanon’s National Library and three universities. The workspaces (where AIF’s six-person technical team conserves, documents and digitises images and preserves them in climate-controlled storage), the library and 42-seat auditorium, which will soon house a Beirut filmmaking co-operative, occupy the basement. At ground level, gallery-style spaces with shopfront windows allow for exhibitions and workshops. Public Works, a critically minded research and design studio, operates from AIF’s mezzanine. 

In 2024, AIF’s library opened to the public. The stacks combine its specialist print library with Dawawine bookshop’s collections dedicated to cinema, sound and performance, and the library of Public Works. AIF launched its public programme in March with a series of screenings and talks about politics and film translation.

3.
The theatre
Inspiring future generations to take the stage
Metro al-Madina

Hisham Jaber’s flat overlooks Beirut’s derelict Holiday Inn, which was ruined during Lebanon’s civil war a few months after it opened in 1974. Through its gaping windows, the Mediterranean is clearly visible. “There will be peace, it seems,” says Jaber, glancing into his coffee. “We’ve faced many problems these past 13 years but now we have a clearer vision of what we should do.”

The flat is a short walk away from the Metro al-Madina theatre, which Jaber co-founded. He is well known for his on-stage persona: cabaret emcee Roberto Kobrolsi, notable for his mop of black curls, spectacles and fondness for silver lamé. Since 2002, Jaber has written and directed more than a dozen plays, musicals, stand-up comedy routines and cabarets that have been staged around Lebanon and the wider region. While Jaber is invested in recent history, the performances he’s staged tend to favour the light-hearted and sardonic over the tragic. And when asked why he became an entertainer, it’s a simple answer. “I like people to be happy,” he says.

Like Metropolis cinema, Metro was born in Saroulla’s little theatre. But since July 2023 it has made its home at the theatre of the Aresco Center, next door to The Arab Image Foundation (AIF). “We moved during the biggest crisis of our generation,” says Jaber. “They said we were mad but it was a good move. You feel new energy in the hall.” Renovated and redesigned by architect Paul Kaloustian, Metro’s terraced hall can seat more than 700 guests at tables in front of the 14-metre-wide stage. The venue is “a bit trippy”, says Jaber. “It’s like something from a 1960s film about the future or outer space.”

Currently headlining at Metro is Al-Souq al-Oumoumi (The Public Market), a musical comedy set in the early 20th century, in a thriving red-light district on Beirut’s Mutanabbi Street. Featuring 18 vocalists and musicians, the show was written and directed by Jaber, who created the music with composer Makram Aboul Hosn. 

During the recent war, Metro unveiled 3al-Qamar (On the Moon), a series of intimate Tuesday evening listening sessions. “We invite two or three solo musicians to try something new,” says Jaber. “It’s a lab for small gigs that could later develop into a main stage show.” Several new performers have also emerged from Mehaniya, a free, two-year performing-arts programme that the troupe created in 2022. Rather than soliciting donations, the theatre invites regular clients to become partners in the company, though some support comes from the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) and Unesco. AFAC and Culture Resource, another regional cultural support agency, also made a grant to Metro after the Beirut port blast.

Jaber says that peace will be a time for consolidation and experimentation, and it should bring younger artists with fresh ideas to the theatre. “Next year, we might start working with new technologies. With AI – sensors and suits – you can bring a new dimension to onstage visuals.” He sips his coffee. “And it’s cheaper. Thank god.”

While much in Lebanon is still in ruins, Jaber echoes the sentiments of Mroué and Nasser Eddin, expressing relief and enthusiasm at the prospect of something resembling normality in Lebanon. Like Metropolis and AIF, Metro has come through the crises on firmer ground than before 2019. The contingency, though, never abates entirely. “We are still recovering from the extreme violence that we lived through in 2024,” says Mroué. “We’re happy, but cautious. We know how fragile this stability is.”

Comic relief: The artisans keeping the art of manga-making alive

You might not have noticed the revolution that’s occurred in the world of Japanese manga in the past 15 years – unless you were looking closely. The comic-book art form that traces its roots back to the witty, whimsical images of the great Ukiyo-e woodblock print artists, has moved squarely into the digital world. Manga, once available only on paper, is moving unstoppably from print to mobile phones and tablets. Not only that but the manga that are still printed on paper have undergone their own technical transformation. In the blink of an eye, an army of skilled typesetters – the people who put the words into manga – has been replaced by digital technology.

There’s no need to worry about the industry itself; the numbers are still huge. Manga sales generated a staggering ¥704.3bn (€4.3bn) in 2024 – the first time they had topped ¥700bn and up 1.5 per cent on the previous year. This accounted for 44.8 per cent of Japan’s entire publishing market. But to understand how the industry is changing, you need to dig into those numbers. Digital manga sales have nearly doubled since 2019, last year totalling ¥512.2bn (€3.2bn) or 72.7 per cent of the market, while sales of physical comic books and magazines dropped 8.6 per cent over the same 12-month period, coming in at ¥192.1bn (€1.17bn). Manga lovers are still eager to get their weekly fix but it’s more likely to be downloaded onto a device than read in the chunky paper comics that are sold in convenience stores and bookshops.

One person closely following this shift has been Masashi Kinpachi Okamoto, who has worked for Shueisha, one of Japan’s most renowned manga publishers, since 1994. Shueisha has many hit titles, none more so than the juggernaut One Piece, which has sold 500 million volumes since it came out in 1997. It is the best-selling manga by a single author. As he was overseeing the transition to digital production and the creation of Shueisha’s vast digital archive, Okamoto realised that the move away from paper was closing the chapter not only on the printed product itself but on the skills required to make it. Even the artists have gone digital. “The number of manga artists who still draw on paper with pens has become increasingly rare,” says Okamoto. Like any true fan, he wanted to preserve those techniques for posterity and came up with the Shueisha Manga-Art Heritage project, which would use specialised printing techniques to make limited-edition versions of manga artworks, which are then made available to buy. A new genre, manga art, was born and Shueisha opened its own gallery in Azabudai Hills in Tokyo in 2023.

Shueisha, which was founded in the 1920s, has a rich back catalogue to draw from. It has been publishing manga since 1949, beginning with monthly magazine Omoshiro (Fun) Book for Boys and Girls, which included such titles as Shonen Oja and was a runaway success. Today, its titles include a manga anthology magazine Weekly Shonen Jump, which has been going since 1968 and is heading towards sales of eight billion copies. As part of one of Okamoto’s gallery projects, he created a new Omoshiro Book with artist Keiichi Tanaami, who remembered waiting every week for the original as a schoolboy.

The Azabudai Hills gallery is divided in two, with one area for exhibitions and the other a small showroom for perusing available artworks. Drawers are filled with exquisite works by big-name manga artists such as Eiichiro Oda, Tite Kubo and Go Nagai. Regular manga printing is already unique in Japan – the cover of One Piece uses five to seven colours, for example, more than any other country would even consider. But the works on display at the gallery are even more vibrant. Okamoto collaborates with the best paper suppliers in Japan and overseas to find the perfect backdrop for the pieces, whether that’s handmade Echizen washi from the Iwano Heizaburou paper mill or Velvet Fine Art Paper from Epson.

Understanding how the manga production process has altered at such a breakneck pace requires some sense of what it used to be.  “After the war, it was common to etch the original artwork onto a metal plate, cut out the speech bubble areas and then embed the letters,” says Okamoto. “After 1970, metal gave way to phototypesetting, which involved pasting the words into speech bubbles on the original artwork before the whole thing was turned into a prepress film that could then be printed.” In the mid-2000s, the skilled work of phototypesetting was gradually rendered redundant by the arrival of typesetting software and digital fonts. The final blow came circa 2010, when the whole convoluted process of making printing plates from film plates was no longer necessary; they can now simply be created directly from digital data.

Though the printing of Shueisha’s big circulation manga continues much as it has since the 1970s (rotary printing for those who are interested), everything up to that stage has gone digital. “The typesetting and plate-making processes have been digitised, and companies that can do metal typesetting or phototypesetting don’t really exist anymore,” says Okamoto. An industry that employed tens of thousands and was key to manga production has all but disappeared.

Yasuo Komai is the only phototypesetter still working in Tokyo. When Monocle visits him in his compact studio, a similar machine to the one he uses – a sprawling contraption from the 1980s made by once-dominant Japanese type foundry Shaken – is appearing in an exhibition about the history of printing in Japan. Komai has spent his 60-year career creating the words for everything from book covers to adverts and, from time to time, manga. “Phototypesetting was ideal for manga, where you don’t always have the same fonts or size of lettering and the words change in size depending on speech or emphasis,” he says.

There is a strong sense that Komai is a living piece of a rapidly disappearing past, a man whose skills should be treasured as much as any more obvious traditional craft. Operating the sizeable machine is an impossibly laborious process for the novice – but Komai has decades of experience and works with deft precision, able to judge the precise font, size and spacing for any story or book cover. There’s no room for error since the characters are printed directly onto photographic paper but there’s a human touch and sensibility that he feels a computer can’t replicate.

“Digital is certainly a simpler process but phototypesetting has a freedom that allows for creativity,” says Komai. “The designer will give us instructions but we can fix things that someone else might not even notice and make the whole design more coherent. I bring my own colour to the work. Some authors still specifically request typesetting for their book covers – they know that the quality and dimensions they want can’t be achieved with digital fonts. One problem is that it’s hard to get the materials now – film paper and so on.”

Sensing the near extinction of this skill, Okamoto called on Komai to fire up the phototypesetter to create the words for a new manga from the studio of legendary artist Fujio Akatsuka, which was then exhibited in the Shueisha gallery. Okamoto wanted this done the old-fashioned way. “We asked Komai-san to do the phototypesetting and asked the artist, Yoshi Katta, to use pen and paper,” he says.

Okamoto is also working with a young Tokyo printer, Hiroshi Munakata, who has a 1969 Heidelberg letterpress machine that almost fills his studio in Kagurazaka. When he was setting up the heritage project, Okamoto looked for someone to print on a letterpress machine but could only find a firm, in Nagano, which subsequently closed. He searched again and met Munakata, who had just bought his old printer. “Nobody wanted it,” he says. “It’s a dying technology and most people thought it was too old-fashioned.” Not Okamoto, who has commissioned several pieces from him including a work from One Piece and pages of Keiichi Tanaami’s vibrant Omoshiro Book.

Manga production is a collaborative process and the raw artwork is just one part of it. “Manga is ultimately created with the purpose of being printed,” says Okamoto. “But the original manuscript is an intermediate work, not the final form. Simply printing what is stored in a database wouldn’t have the power of a finished piece. By using advanced printing techniques to maximise the appeal of the original artwork, limiting the production quantity and enhancing its rarity – that’s when it becomes what we’re calling manga art.

“Until now, discussions about manga have mostly focused on the author, the story or the images; the production process is rarely mentioned,” adds Okamoto. “By creating works with letterpress and other printing techniques, I hope that we’re preserving and showing off these techniques.” He’s thrilled that people from different walks of life buy pieces from the gallery; some works are so popular they’re sold by lottery. “Buyers come from Japan and overseas; not only manga fans but art collectors too,” he says. “It’s been interesting to see people who come in and say, ‘I’ve never read One Piece but I want to buy this because it’s a great piece of art.’”
mangaart.jp

Hot tickets: The best of this month’s cultural releases

Film 

Motel Destino
Karim Aïnouz
Having made its debut at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, this Brazilian erotic thriller from director Karim Aïnouz is finally getting a wide release. After a hit goes wrong, on-the-run low-level gangster Heraldo (Iago Xavier) arrives at the titular motel and finds himself caught up in a dreamy steamy love triangle with its married owners Dayana (Nataly Rocha) and Elias (Fábio Assunção).
‘Motel Destino’ is released on 9 May 

Riefenstahl
Andres Veiel
Leni Riefenstahl is best known for directing Triumph of the Will, a striking Nazi propaganda film. She has been endlessly debated since, questioning whether it’s possible to spin beauty out of evil. But what is not up for debate is her effect on cinema, creating an aesthetic of fascism that influenced everything from Star Wars to The Lion King: a legacy explored in this incisive documentary.
‘Riefenstahl’ is released on 9 May 

The Phoenician Scheme
Wes Anderson 
Beloved auteur Wes Anderson returns with this globe-trotting espionage thriller. Regular collaborators Benicio del Toro, Willem Dafoe and Bill Murray are in tow, along with some intriguing first-timers, including Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed and Mia Threapleton. The tone is darker than Anderson’s typical work but, as with all of his films, artful symmetry, cool costuming and deadpan humour are guaranteed.
‘The Phoenician Scheme’ is released on 23 May

Books 

Small Boat
Vincent Delecroix, translated by Helen Stevenson
Based on a real event, the sinking of a dinghy carrying migrants across the English Channel in 2021, which led to the loss of 27 lives, Small Boat imagines the subsequent questioning of a radio operator who fielded calls from the vessel at the Cap Gris-Nez marine rescue centre. Delecroix’s urgent novel examines her decision not to send help. It is a work of striking empathy.
‘Small Boat’ is out now

Things in Nature Merely Grow
Yiyun Li
“There is no good way to say this,” Li’s memoir begins. They are the words of a police detective bringing the news that Li’s son, James, has killed himself. This happened in 2024, seven years after James’s brother, Vincent, took his own life. Li does not offer uplift – “One should never evade facts,” she writes – but her meditation on death and grief is extraordinarily powerful.
‘Things in Nature Merely Grow’ is published on 20 May

Suspicion
Seicho Matsumoto, translated by Jesse Kirkwood
Author and publisher Roberto Calasso once called Seicho Matsumoto, who is best known for crime fiction, “the Simenon of Japan”. In this new translation of a taut 1982 novella,
a former Tokyo hostess seduces a businessman. After their wedding they are involved in a car crash; he drowns, she survives. The question is whether the defence lawyer who takes her case is helping an innocent woman or falling into a moral quagmire.
‘Suspicion’ is published on 29 May

TV 

Carême 
Apple TV1
Marie-Antoine Carême was history’s first celebrity chef. He baked Napoleon’s wedding cake, orchestrated feasts for the Russian tsar and for the British prince regent in Brighton. A luscious series directed by Martin Bourboulon explores the life of this impoverished orphan turned culinary genius and unexpected imperial spy.
‘Carême’ is released on 30 April. For our interview with director Martin Bourboulon, turn to page 50

Pernille
Netflix
Henriette Steenstrup’s comedic creation, middle-aged single mother Pernille, has become something of a national treasure in her native Norway. Also known by the title Pørni, Steenstrup’s series, now in its fifth season, serves up affable, down-to earth chaos.
‘Pernille’ season 5 is released on 15 May 

Murderbot
Apple TV1
Apple TV1’s wry adaptation of Martha Wells’s Nebula and Hugo Award-winning book series stars Alexander Skarsgård as a security android who hacks its own systems and achieves free will. Yet, as it turns out, it would much rather be left alone to watch its soap operas than turn on humanity.
‘Murderbot’ is released on 16 May  

Music 

Journey Through Life
Femi Kuti
Femi Kuti continues to release the kind of kinetic and jubilant protest music by which his father, Nigerian legend Fela, made his name. But on his latest album, Kuti is looking inward. During this up-tempo escapade through his 62 years of innocence and experience, the veteran saxophonist deals out life lessons amid his trademark Afrobeat.
‘Journey Through Life’ is released on 25 April 

Lotus 
Little Simz
One of the UK’s biggest breakthroughs of recent years returns, having steadily sharpened her voice across five albums, secured a Mercury Music Prize in 2022 and performed triumphant at last year’s Glastonbury (as well as starring in Netflix drama Top Boy and appearing as herself in a Spider-Man film). Her sixth album looks set to seal her superstar status, with an ambitious global genre stew, such as on the percussive lead single “Flood”, which features Nigerian singer Obongjayar and South African rapper Moonchild Sanelly.
‘Lotus’ is released on 9 May 

Plaeygirl
MØ 
Danish singer MØ was at the forefront of Scandinavia’s glacial synth-pop wave of the 2010s. Her fourth album marks a career rebirth – complete with Alice Cooper-style face paint. Plaeygirl is full of expertly produced synths and big electro beats. It’s not unlike Charli xcx’s Brat gone a bit goth.
‘Plaeygirl’ is released on 16 May

Art 

Christian Marclay: The Clock
National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavík
A 21st-century masterpiece, The Clock is a 24-hour supercut of 100 years of film and TV history. Every new minute is marked by a clip displaying or mentioning the exact time. Marclay spent three years scouring archives to find each one. For its Icelandic debut, the gallery will stay open all night twice, including on the summer solstice, so that visitors can immerse themselves in the rhythms of the work – or simply set their watches by it.
‘The Clock’ runs 2 May to 22 June

Lorna Simpson: Source Notes
The Met Fifth Avenue, New York
Whether working in painting and photography or text-based wall sculptures, Lorna Simpson always puts people at the heart of her examinations of race, gender, time and memory. This overview of her 40-year career also carries recent highlights from her Special Characters series. The “source notes” of the title are her found images, often cut from vintage magazines.
‘Source Notes’ runs 19 May to 2 November

Photography

The Lure of the Image
Fotomuseum Winterthur,Winterthur
The popular Swiss photography museum reopens after a two-year renovation. This group show draws on three years of online experimentation and dialogue between artists and researchers. ASMR videos and memes will be employed to make serious points about the seductive appeal of photography.
‘The Lure of the Image’ runs from 17 May to 12 October

Meet the team behind Milan’s Salone de Mobile

“As a child, I remember the anticipation leading up to the opening day of Salone del Mobile,” says Maria Porro. “I saw the passion of the people in my family company and I understood its great power.” As a fourth-generation director of her family’s namesake firm – one of the brands that founded Salone del Mobile Milano in 1961 – Porro maintains a deep respect for the annual furniture fair. Held every April and widely considered the design industry’s most significant global gathering, it is the anchor event of what is unofficially dubbed Milan Design Week.

Porro’s appreciation of Salone del Mobile is evidenced by the fact that she is now its president, a position she has held since 2021. “I wouldn’t say that it was a childhood dream to take the role, more a crazy decision,” says the Brianza-based Porro with a laugh when monocle meets her and her team outside the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. “I didn’t put myself forward but was elected from the board committee. I said ‘yes’ because Salone has been so important to so many companies.”

That importance lies in the business opportunities that the event creates. In recent years some 370,000 visitors from more than 100 nations have come through the doors of Lombardy’s Rho Fiera trade halls where Salone is held. Some 2,000 brands from over 35 countries show their sofas, chairs, tables, lighting, homeware and household appliances in an area the size of 30 football pitches. Despite the event’s scale, the work is done with a compact team. “It’s a wide-ranging group including a board of directors, operations managers and a technical team responsible for the fair’s layout,” says Porro, adding that every exhibitor’s stand is assessed for technical, functional, sustainable and accessible requirements.

“It’s a busy year-round operation,” she says. “We’re already working on next year’s edition and even planning for 2027. But it has created an ecosystem that fuels jobs, design innovation and international business opportunities – and strengthens Milan’s role as a global design hub.”
salonemilano.it

Meet the people cooking up a contemporary twist on Taipei’s traditional breakfast shops

In Taiwan, breakfast can be a rushed affair. On the curb in front of a street-food vendor, you’ll see scooters hastily parked as their riders, helmets still fastened, queue beside smart office workers and uniformed students, waiting for their turn to order. Now and then, a retiree or an idle auntie claims a low plastic stool, savouring their choice with unhurried ease. But for many, breakfast is eaten on the go as they sweep through the city.

The Taiwanese breakfast shop is a product of the region’s postwar history: its origins lie with the steady flow of wheat that came as part of Cold War-era aid programmes from the US and also with the arrival of mainland Chinese refugees who knew precisely what to do with it. Until then, rice, not wheat, was the island’s staple stodge and the latter was a foreign commodity, largely unfamiliar to most. For breakfast, wheat flour was used to make long, deep-fried dough sticks, flaky flatbreads or pillowy buns. Sometimes the flatbreads were rolled up with spring onions and an egg to form a dan bing, a morning staple. The first breakfast shops in Taiwan were street stalls, stacked with layers of bamboo steamer baskets and bouquets of fried dough sticks. Eventually, bricks-and-mortar locations began to crop up, though many maintain a certain simplicity: they tend to be humble, utilitarian spaces where food is prepared on a single stainless-steel flat-top griddle facing the street.

“Dan bing is usually pan-fried but we deep-fry ours,” Cheng Hsu-Chong, the second-generation owner of the Chongqing Soy Milk and Fried Egg breakfast shop, tells Monocle. The 50 year-old institution on the edge of a traditional market has neither a front wall nor a door. Why deep fry? “It’s faster,” he says. “And it tastes better.”

The main action takes place at a vendor cart in front of the shop, where Cheng’s son is poised over a fryer. He drops a thin flatbread speckled with spring onions into the bubbling oil, then cracks an egg into the fryer. As the bread crisps and expands, he folds it around the egg, lifting it from the oil, before adding a diced pickled daikon radish. With a swift motion, he hands it over to the cashier, who finishes it with a few generous shakes of ground white pepper. The dan bing is paired with a hot cup of sweetened, freshly brewed soy milk, a popular drink at Taiwanese breakfast shops.

The precise origins of the dan bing, which is more like a light puff pastry than fried dough, remains as murky as the bubbling oil from which ours has just emerged. In Mandarin, dan means “egg” and bing means “flatbread”. It is thought to have originated in Taiwan as an extra-thin riff on the spring-onion pancake. Variations exist, some more crêpe-like than others.

“Many people use the batter method but we just roll it out from dough,” says Qin Hui Lin, the owner of Miss Qin’s Soy Milk Shop. “It’s what I grew up with.” Qin’s parents came to Taiwan by way of the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu during China’s civil war and she grew up eating dan bing stuffed with chopped-up fermented long beans, served with finely minced chilli and a thickened soy sauce flavoured with bean curd. It’s one of the specialities at her family’s shop, which began as a modest stall under an awning 76 years ago and has since expanded into two adjacent shopfronts. One of them, positioned on a street corner, has a deli-style counter, while the other is for those who want to eat in. A solid wall divides the two areas.

Qin’s son, who is now in charge, refreshed the shop recently with a new coat of paint and professionally taken photos of the dishes, displayed both on the menus and in the décor. The food bears plenty of influences from the family’s Jiangsu heritage. Among the highlights are the lion’s head meatballs, a dish that consists of pork with soy sauce and spices. “The meatballs were originally just for the staff but our customers liked them too and now they’re one of our signatures,” says Qin. Traditionally served in a broth with cabbage leaves, they’re now sold by Qin in a sesame-dotted flatbread that resembles a meatball sub. “You have to keep adapting,” she says.

Despite such willingness to adapt, most breakfast shops have remained little changed for decades. That said, a new wave of younger entrepreneurs is taking a different approach. You’ll find Lao Jiang’s House, which is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, not in an old market but on the edges of Taipei’s financial district. The owners are five friends who quit their day jobs to start the business after the coronavirus-related lockdowns.

“Most of us have worked at traditional breakfast shops at some point,” says co-owner Din Tsung-Hsiung. “We just wanted to create something a little different.” Servicing mostly white-collar workers during rush hour and late-night club-goers on the weekends, Lao Jiang’s House has a menu that offers all of the classics but with subtle updates. For example, there’s a dan bing stuffed with spring-onion-scented beef instead of just egg and another with a rice-paper exterior. “It’s stuff that we want to eat ourselves,” says Din.

What makes Lao Jiang’s House stand out is its décor. With white tiles, light-wood trimmings and solid timber tables, it looks more like a Western coffee shop than a traditional breakfast shop. The space has been carefully designed to encourage diners to linger. Across Taiwan, the idea of a more design-forward breakfast space – albeit with the same level of comfort as the original breakfast shops – is gaining traction. Few do it as effortlessly as Nite-Nite Breakfast, a newcomer that has quietly entered the scene. Tucked away in the Neihu district, it has floor-to-ceiling glass windows and is branded with a smiley-face logo with bright-yellow accents. The dining area is spacious and flooded with natural light, a deliberate counterpoint to Nite-Nite’s often cramped competitors.

“Most breakfast shops are on busy street corners. We chose this spot to help people to unwind,” says Jane Hu, a marketing manager – a position that few old-school breakfast shops employ. When Monocle visits on a Monday afternoon, the shop is full of diners sitting down for their meal. The menu is full of unexpected flavour combinations. There’s a mapo tofu dan bing, stuffed with tofu, minced meat and fermented chilli sauce; we’re also tempted by an egg sandwich featuring pork floss – dehydrated pork with a candy-floss-like texture – and century egg, a preserved duck egg with a distinctive blackish hue.

Traditionalists might scoff at new establishments of this kind (as well as at the tendency of their clientele to take photos of their food) but they are attracting footfall. Perhaps this evolution of the breakfast shop is a quiet rebellion against the sameness of so much brunch culture, with its bland avocado toasts, or the relentless pace of Taipei’s commuter hours? That’s something to discuss over a dan bing, anyway.

Meet the founders of Sasuphi, the womenswear brand that’s equal parts professional and chic

“This is a new vision of power dressing,” says Sara Ferrero, pointing to lightweight cashmere cardigans, satin tube skirts and breezy crêpe-de-Chine shirts by Sasuphi, the womenswear label that she co-founded in Milan with Susanna Cucco in 2021. Ferrero and Cucco are widely known for their exceptional taste and stellar CVs, which include executive positions in some of the city’s most established fashion houses. Ferrero, a former investment banker and consultant, worked as CEO of Valextra and Joseph. She was also a general partner at Neo Investment Partners, leading the private equity firm’s investments in beauty and fashion; and remains a board member at Ferragamo. Cucco has spent decades working as an art director for companies such as Max Mara.

Even after seeing the output of some of the biggest houses in the world, both Cucco and Ferrero felt that the luxury fashion market was missing a sense of pragmatism – bold designs that can still fit into day-to-day life. “Fashion designers create according to their vision, not according to what women want to wear to feel good,” says Cucco, also pointing to fashion’s perennial obsession with youth culture. “We thought that there was space for women like us who are not necessarily young; people who work, who have meetings in the day and events in the evening,” says Ferrero.

That’s how Sasuphi was born – from a desire to offer well-made, adaptable clothes that won’t go out of style in just a few months. “The market is insulting the customer when it offers clothes that become irrelevant after one season,” says Ferrero. Instead, Sasuphi makes pieces that “you don’t want to let go”. Designs from previous seasons remain part of the collections, styled with new-season creations, the focus always being on clean-lined silhouettes inspired by architecture rather than fashion trends. “Living in Milan, you’re surrounded by buildings by some of the best talents of the 20th century, and that shapes how you think about design,” says Ferrero. “Architecture is also about functionality,” she adds, while sitting at the long conference table of Sasuphi’s showroom-cum-studio, which occupies the sunny first floor of one of Milan’sgenteel residential palazzos in Brera. “We bring the geometry of architecture to our clothes.”

Close inspection of their pieces reveals outstanding Italian fabrics sourced from the country’s best textile makers: thick silks from Ratti in Como, finespun cashmere from Cariaggi, heavy cotton shirting from Albini and wool from Zegna’s famous facility in Piedmont. “As Italians, we want good ingredients,” says Cucco, who firmly believes that everyone deserves to wear natural materials. “They’re luxurious on the skin, plus they breathe in the summer and retain heat in the winter – the original tech materials.”

Despite the pair’s industry connections, Sasuphi launched without investors and without a marketing team. “We needed independence in order to follow our values,” says Cucco. “And it’s working.” The brand is now available in more than 50 top outlets worldwide, from Net-a-Porter to Bergdorf Goodman, and sells out quickly.

For spring the label’s collection focuses on a potent, mood-boosting colour palette, from poppy red and periwinkle blue to hyacinth pink. Colour is a form of “gentle power”, says Cucco, who wears pink-framed glasses.

The line also includes lightweight, fuss-free styles, from silk trenches to voluminous knits and silk T-shirts, which can be easily layered, becoming the cornerstone of any spring wardrobe. As the two women pull items from the showroom racks – white trousers that button down the sides, a butter-yellow shirt dress, a silk khaki T-shirt – they restyle themselves as they go, creating various combinations with every garment. That’s the best way to wear Sasuphi.

Ferrero and Cucco also demonstrate how adaptable their designs are by taking them on the road and hosting trunk shows around the world. “As a small company, this is the best way to generate interest,” says Ferrero, explaining that even the smallest in-person trunk show creates opportunities to connect with customers, share stories and showcase the garments’ artisanal quality. “You don’t need 100 million followers on social media. You don’t need followers, period. You need fans. You need 1,000 people who believe in you and buy your products.”
sasuphi.com