It is hard to believe that, as late as Edward Coke’s time, it was credible in England to assert that the monarchy was originally founded by Brutus of Troy. (Not et tu Brutus. Another guy.) And yet in Japan it was believed well into the 20^th century that their monarchy was founded in the 7th century BC, specifically on February 11 of 660 BC, by Jimmu, a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu. Also of the storm god Susanoo, by the way. I mean, why stop at one?

Now it may well be that the Emperorship was in some way established by a guy named Jimmu or something of the sort in or around 660 B.C. Possibly he set up shop in Yamato on February 11, now celebrated as "National Foundation Day" in Japan. After all, there was a historical figure at the centre of the Arthurian legend, a leader of the Romanized Britons after the legions left, despite later embellishments ranging from the inspiring to the downright silly. And Jimmu too may well have been a real person, or modeled on one.

Brutus of Troy? Not so much. I mean, maybe there was a Trojan called Brutus and maybe he even was descended from Aeneas. But however he got into a 9th century Historia Britonum it was not by ship west from Troy, out through the Pillars of Hercules and then north to glory. Nor was "Britain" named for "Brutus". (Nor, I submit, did Aeneas flee to Italy after the sack of Troy and have a son Ascanius who founded Alba Longa. Nor was Brutus descended from Noah’s son Ham. And so on.)

Perhaps you think it childish of me to make sport of these legends. But I do so in order to draw attention to a crucial difference between the governments, constitutions and political cultures of England and Japan. And I do it while acknowledging that the government of Japan seems in many ways to have enjoyed a more organic and harmonious relationship to its citizens than elsewhere.

The thing is, even if people believed the more fanciful tales about Brutus, and gave them some minor weight in legitimizing monarchy in Britain in principle, nobody ever sought to bolster their claim to kingship, or for sweeping powers for the king, by pointing to Brutus. English kings, going back long before Canute, established their claim to the throne by governing well. And governing tyrannically was never justified by the origins of the monarchy even if people sometimes got away with it for a while. At bottom, Brutus was just a piece of colourful embroidery.

Jimmu was not. Or rather, Amaterasu was not. The Japanese Emperor really did claim divinity, via Amaterasu’s grandson Ninigi, supposedly Jimmu’s great grandfather, and a whole lot of his people believed it. Not all, of course. But those who did not kept their mouths shut or someone shut them permanently for them. And because the Emperor was a living god, to the point that when after defeat in 1945 they actually saw the rather unimpressive figure of Hirohito in his ill-fitting suits (because tailors were not permitted to touch a living god even to measure him) and heard his all-too-human voice they were profoundly shocked.

It sounds as silly as Brutus of Troy. But this claim, which incidentally could not be made in a Christian society, made genuine self-government impossible. Canute rebuked courtiers for telling him he was such a favourite of God that he could command the waves. Japanese Emperors would have rebuked and possibly executed courtiers for telling him he was not himself a God. And it matters.

It’s no accident that a regime headed by a living god could launch World War II even though it was neither morally justified nor practically sensible. Who’s going to tell a divinity he’s a belligerent nitwit?

"A man can have too much civilization, just as a man can have too much beer." G.K. Chesterton, quoted in "Chesterton’s Mail Bag" in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 7 #8 (July-August 2004)

"How small," Dr. Johnson rhymed, "of all that human hearts endure,/ That part which laws or kings can cause or cure." It’s a useful reminder, and one somebody ought perhaps to put to music, with a backbeat, in honour of February 7, 1964, when the Beatles arrived in the United States to spearhead the first really successful British invasion since the Seven Years’ War.

It was the eruption onto the main Western stage of an amazing array of musical talent and innovation that showed that Britain was far from exhausted as a cultural force. I do not think it is merely a reflection of my particular advancing age that I call The Beatles, the Who, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, David Bowie and you can pick many others from the Yardbirds to Herman’s Hermits an exceptional flowering of brilliance. And it is certainly not simply a reflection of my own preferences to say that when these acts showed up in an America whose youth were growing sick of sugary pop songs, it changed the world in ways Elvis Presley alone could not have done.

"The Sixties" had many causes beyond a group of talented Brits giving voice and legitimacy to sometimes juvenile frustration. But rock was the backdrop, and once the Beatles and others had touched down and lit things up, nothing could ever be the same.

I would go further and say the Beatles in particular smoothed the path of social change by being so earnest, so "with it" as one could once say without irony or corn, and yet so decent, blowing the whistle on angry radicalism and somehow placing a kindly, steadying hand on the whole counterculture. "You say you want a revolution? … when you talk about destruction/ Don’t you know that you can count me out".

One can point to laws, kings and wars contributing to the upheaval of the 1960s including obviously Vietnam, the "imperial president" Richard Nixon and the civil rights acts. But politicians jump out to lead parades that are already underway, they don’t create or steer them. It was the ambiance of the period that made the anti-war movement so important, not the other way around. And it was the final, long-overdue change of heart among many Americans including Southerners that finally made formal civil rights a social and political possibility.

There were other contributors to the wildness of that decade including darker forces like the Weathermen and of course pharmaceuticals. And here I think "the pill" mattered more than things like LSD or even marijuana. So the Beatles were far from alone. But they were both surfing on and helping shape a massive social movement that changed what politicians could do or duck.

When you saw the way young people reacted to their arrival in the United States, you knew the world was changing radically and laws and kings would have to scramble to keep up with fast-beating hearts.

A reminder that "Wish I'd said that" needs your help. If you think it's worth my time and effort to produce it, make a monthly pledge so I can keep it going. "the lotus-eaters... call shame silliness and drive it into disgrace and exile; they call self-control cowardice and expel it with abuse..."

Socrates in Plato, The Republic

The claim that poetry or other art can somehow supply meaning in our lives when faith has gone "is like saying the wallpaper will save us when the wall has crumbled". T.S. Eliot

On February 5 of 1852 Russia’s New Hermitage Museum opened to the public. It was already impressive then, and despite or even because of the Bolshevik Revolution became more impressive still as items from around Russia were added. It remains one of the world’s great museums especially for its art. But its story is not altogether a happy one.

From its beginnings under Catherine the Great in 1754 it has held impressive pieces, a tribute to the power of autocrats and tyrants to extract wealth even from an impoverished populace and spend it on the trappings of culture. Catherine herself acquired literally thousands of old masters, along with engraved gems, drawings and so forth. But her people were starving. And as with the infamous Potemkin villages, such museums in the glittering if slave-labour-built Tsarist capital of St. Petersburg convinced not only foreigners but even its rulers that Russia was indeed keeping up with the West.

Unfortunately it was not. Within three years of the opening of the Hermitage, Russia would lose the Crimean war right in its front yard to Britain and France despite the glaring inadequacies of both their military efforts. And this evidence of insufficient or even failed modernization precipitated a half century of halting reform, inept reaction and upheaval that culminated in the disastrous collapse during World War I into communism during which the Tsars continued to pour out treasure on art and other artefacts.

The Bolsheviks in turn made the museum even more impressive, looting Tsarist and aristocratic palaces and adding their possessions to the now state facility. Stalin later secretly sold thousands of works to help finance his forced industrialization. And then the Soviets added art looted by the Red Army in the closing part of the Second World War, although they kept it hidden until after the fall of the USSR, a dubious contribution to culture. But they never gave it back, which is more than a bit uncultured, and even cancelled a planned 2013 visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel because of the danger that she would mention this subject. Especially ironic in that the exhibit she was meant to visit along with Vladimir Putin had the friendly title "Bronze Age of Europe: Europe Without Borders".

Visiting the Hermitage at any point after 1852 one might have felt that was in an institution very similar to the British Museum right down to the impressive Egyptian antiquities. But it was not, right down to the fact that the British Museum was privately founded and has never been a mere branch of the government. And the impression to the contrary has been part of a far larger misconception about the extent to which forced cultural acquisition, like forced industrialization, is an adequate or even superior alternative to the real, spontaneous thing.

"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it." E. B. White (quoted on brainyquote.com)

Apparently February 4 is a day to be proud of in Japan because 46 guys killed themselves as a reward for a good deed. I have to say it’s not my idea of a red-letter day.

The story is that in 1703 in what is now Tokyo and was then Edo, all but one of the "Forty-seven Ronin" committed seppuku not because they had failed to avenge their master’s death but because they had succeeded. The "Akō incident" became a "national legend" in Japan, even the national legend, a shining example of the samurai code of honour. And yes, I do have to explain it if you’re not Japanese. Or rather describe it. I do not think it can be explained in the sense of being defended.

We’re not sure the details as it was not written up in reliable detail for nearly a hundred years thanks to censorship laws. But the basic story is as follows: These samurai were left leaderless, or "ronin," after their lord Asano Naganori was forced to kill himself for attacking a wretched court official named Kira Yoshinaka. So the ronin spent a year working out a plot to kill Kira, after which they had to kill themselves because of the shame of committing murder.

As you already sense, I find the whole thing unspeakably weird. It begins with the key fact that Kira was abusive and corrupt. Two hapless local officials, Lord Kamei and Asano himself, were ordered to prepare a reception for the Emperor’s envoys and were given etiquette lessons by Kira. But they didn’t give him sufficient bribes so he abused them so badly that while Asano kept his cool Kamei lost his and was going to do Kira in.

To save Kamei’s life, his own advisors quickly hustled up a major bribe for Kira who then began treating their master better. But he kept taunting Asano and when he ridiculed him as an ill-mannered rustic, Asano snapped and went after him with a dagger, giving him a minor scratch on his face. (Not exactly what one would hope from a samurai, I note in passing; I thought these guys could kill you with a greeting card.)

Despite the feeble nature of the attack, the very fact of drawing a weapon within Edo Castle was fatal and Asano had to kill himself, his family lost his possessions and lands, and his followers were made outcasts. And so everybody went along with it because I mean what’s blatant injustice when honor is involved or something.

Except there was this group of 47 who took a secret oath to get revenge even though they’d been ordered not to. They went underground as traders, laborers or drunken debauchees. And after several years they managed to infiltrate and storm Kira’s home, overcome his retainers abetted by the silence of his neighbours who all hated him, caught him and respectfully besought him to kill himself like a true samurai.

He chickened out, wuk wuk, betrayer of the code, so the ringleader sawed off his head with a dagger. Then the ronin carefully extinguished all lamps and fires so the neighbours’ houses were not in danger from a general conflagration, and left with the head.

One of the ronin was either sent to report the success of their mission to Asano’s old domain of Akō or else ran away. Either way he apparently came back much later, was pardoned, and lived to a ripe old age before being buried with the others. The rest went to the temple where their master was buried, washed the head carefully, then put it and the dagger on his grave, offered prayers, left the abbot money for their own funerals, and turned themselves in.

The situation was awkward for the shogun, given general approval of their deed plus its fairly obvious justification under almost any meaningful moral code. So he couldn’t just execute them. Instead he ordered them to execute themselves and they did.

So popular is this tale in Japan that the temple where the ronin’s remains are interred holds a festival every December 14, the successful attack having occurred on the 14^th day of the 12th month in the old Japanese calendar. But it was on the 4th day of the 2nd month that they all cut out their guts and had a second behead them, the final and apparently crowning act of the drama. And one I flatly admit I cannot sympathize with or support.

Were the ronin right or wrong to kill Kira? And if they were right, why celebrate their being put to death for it? Surely they should have gone down fighting. It is simply not possible to imagine the surviving Magnificent Seven ending the film by simultaneously raising their revolvers to their heads and blowing their brains out in unison and making the classic American film in the process.

"The 47 Ronin" a beautiful and picturesque story, to be sure. And apparently Asano’s brother did get his title and a bit of his land back. But it’s also very disturbing. And not least because ordering them to commit suicide, when they apparently had or felt they had no choice, is not an alternative to executing them. It’s just a hypocritical fiction, a way for the shogun to be, as Orwell put it, somewhere else when the trigger is pulled.

Even more baffling to me, in a moral sense, is the lack of concern with right and wrong, indeed the failure to see them as necessarily separate and opposite qualities. The whole story seems to hinge on the ronin’s actions being simultaneously both right and wrong.

I think they were just right. The guy who taunted their lord was no paragon of virtue attacked by mistake. He was a crooked wretch who deserved to be horsewhipped on the steps of his club or gunned down by John Wayne in a classic Western quick-draw showdown. And there’s no suggestion in the story of a kind of Shakespearean scenario in which Asano had a better course of action. Kamei’s men you recall had simply bribed Kira. The emperor or shogun was not, one feels, likely to render justice.

So where’s the vindication of right conduct? Instead there’s something fatalistic, even fey, about a group of such dedicated men bent on making a ritually beautiful bad end for doing a good deed.

To me this story makes no sense. If a particular act of revenge is wrong, don’t do it. And don’t later celebrate those who did. But if it is right, stand by it. There is a weird excluded middle here, where an act is simultaneously right and wrong and ritual rather than moral judgement determines action.

It is not a direct line from the "Akō incident" to Pearl Harbor. But the two are connected by a peculiar, ornate, gorgeously perverse refusal to put individual conscience ahead of "the code", a determination to reject principle on principle.