Japan says it is “watching very closely” the actions of the Chinese delegation to an international maritime organisation after it accepted Chinese names for undersea features that have previously been surveyed and named by Tokyo and are near its exclusive economic zone. An official for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo told that the applications do not, at present, “directly affect the interests of nearby maritime nations” but some officials have described Beijing’s moves as “aggressive” and accused China of “seeking to assume control over territory”. The Sub-Committee on Undersea Feature Names (SCUFN), which comes under the International Hydrographic Organisation and is based in Monaco, received 50 applications from the State Administration of China in 2016 to name undersea features, including sea mounts and ridges. The organisation released its annual report on December 21, in which it said 16 of the applications in the Pacific had been accepted while 34 were not. The newspaper reported that the sub-committee rejected most of the names because “naming them in Chinese may develop into disputes with coastal countries”. Among the applications that were turned down were eight close to the Southern Kyushu-Palau Ridge Region, which runs south from Okinotorishima, Japan’s most southerly island, towards Palau to the south. At least two of the sites that China sought to name lie in an area that Japan applied to exercise sovereignty over to the United Nations commission examining nations’ applications to claim continental shelf territory. In 2014, the panel delayed a decision on Tokyo’s application for the region, which covers 252,000 sq km to the east of the Philippines and borders Palau’s EEZ. Six of the features that China applied to name appear to fall within Palau’s waters. Earlier this year, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing said Japan’s claim to the region is “illegal” and China does not recognise the EEZ or continental shelf claims of the Okinotori. In 2012, SCUFN approved Chinese names for three undersea features some 450km from Miyakojima Island, in Okinawa Prefecture. Japan’s EEZ stretches 370km from Miyakojima. The ministry in Tokyo has emphasised that China has sought to name features that are in international waters and is therefore free to conduct such research. It is clear, however, that Japan is concerned at what is seen as a pattern of assumption of territories in the region and Beijing’s failure to cooperate – or even communicate – with Japan on surveys of the area. The features close to Japan’s EEZ have previously been surveyed and have Japanese names. “This sub-committee sits for the purpose of selecting names for features so they can be standardised for academic purposes,” the official said. “Naming does not directly affect the interests of other maritime nations, although we are watching the situation closely.” But Yoichi Shimada, a professor of international relations at Fukui Prefectural University, says Japan needs to make its concerns heard very clearly and that the foreign ministry is “too anxious about not provoking China to stand up for Japan”. “This sort of aggression by the Chinese is nothing new,” he said “They have made many claims against remote islands in the region and this is just the latest example … Japan needs to protest any such move because failing to do so is only going to cause more and bigger problems in the future.” China is aware of the competition for undersea resources and rights, but naming features is “a common practice of the world’s maritime powers”, the Xinhua news agency said. Over the past six years, China has successfully had 76 names approved, including the 16 in 2016. Among the 50 Chinese proposals this year, 21 features are in the controversial nine-dash line, with which Beijing claims most of the South China Sea. The line had been declared by an international arbitration tribunal in Hague as invalid in July, a month before China’s submission. According to the SCUFN regulations, naming a feature does not necessarily give the namer any rights to it, since any country can apply names to an unnamed feature in international waters. But the regulations also ask other countries to recognise a name applied by a sovereignty state within its territorial sea. “Naming the undersea features … reflects the potential rights China has to these features,” a maritime expert Yang Suihua was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

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Kanye West’s Year of Breaking Bad
John Caramanica | The New York Times
“Rupture has long been the axis around which Mr. West’s career has turned—where most artists seek to create smooth narratives about themselves and get everyone else to play along, he instead prefers disruptive leaps, quick reframing and firebrand positioning. Stasis is his kryptonite.”
John Berger’s Rare Art Criticism
Elisa Wouk Almino | Hyperallergic
“Berger’s art criticism succeeds, I think, because of its tangibility —it is grounded in human experience, specific historical events, and always the physical marks on the artworks. In art writing, these qualities are rare, as enough of it panders to an art market which has given every indication of carrying on with business as usual under Trump.”
The Erasure of Islam From the Poetry of Rumi
Rozina Ali | The New Yorker
“Rumi has helped the spiritual journeys of celebrities—Chris Martin, Madonna, Tilda Swinton—some of whom incorporated his work into theirs. Aphorisms attributed to Rumi circulate daily on social media, offering motivation… Rumi is often described as the best-selling poet in the United States. He is typically referred to as a mystic, a saint, a Sufi, an enlightened man. Curiously, however, although he was a lifelong scholar of the Koran and Islam, he is less frequently described as a Muslim.”
George Michael and Carrie Fisher: The Week in Pop-Culture Writing
The Murakami Effect
Stephen Snyder | Literary Hub
“Murakami’s work begins and ends in translation. He creates fictions that are both translatable and embody translation in their themes and methods. His work moves between languages and cultures (and, perhaps particularly, into and out of English) with relative ease and fluidity, with few textual and stylistic impediments or difficult cultural contexts, but, rather, various mechanisms and textual markers that seem to invite and insist on translation as both theme and practice.”
Anxiety and A Series of Unfortunate Events
Scaachi Koul | Buzzfeed
“The orphans in Unfortunate Events , though they had each other, had lost both of their parents and were largely left on their own. There was never a reason for them to be hopeful, or to expect anything good, because nothing good came. It wasn’t a cheerful way to live, but at least they were prepared. And I wanted to be prepared for what is, still, inevitable: that people die, and that you will, at some point, be left to fend for yourself; that no one is responsible for you, and people will fail you at every turn. Everyone becomes an orphan at some point. At least by reading, I could find a way to feel less alone in my fears.”
Hidden Figures and the Power of Pragmatism
The Undefeated | Soraya Nadia McDonald
“Besides communicating about the power of common interests, Hidden Figures demonstrates why sneering dismissively at ‘identity politics’ or using the term as a pejorative amounts to little more than hogwash. When you stand in the way of progress for women and people of color, you are only hobbling yourself.”
Emma Stone’s La La Land Performance Transcends Its Biggest Flaw
Caroline Framke | Vox
“Mia is the platonic ideal of an onscreen struggling actor. Nothing about this series of events is unexpected, interesting, or unique to her personality. The only glimmers of individuality to be found come during her first, truncated audition when Mia briefly wells up with sharp, devastated tears; crying on cue is an actor staple, but the breadth of emotions we see flicker across Mia’s face in the span of a few seconds is impressive, a testament to Stone’s talent.”
Netflix’s One Day at a Time Is Unpretentious, Artful, and a Pure Delight
Matt Zoller Seitz | Vulture
“The series still feels like comfort food. That’s because the newness of Penelope and her world is nestled within the tradition of the stage-bound, multi-camera, shot-before-a-live-audience comedy, as well as within the more specific Norman Lear tradition of creating major characters that represent distinct political viewpoints without denying their humanity, then pitting them against each other in verbal combat without giving up on the idealistic notion that there’s common ground to be found somewhere if you look hard enough.”
Kate Beckinsale Is a Legit Movie Star
K. Austin Collins | The Ringer
“Beckinsale’s best roles emphasize this lack of likability. Her peculiar talent is an uncanny ability to seem like she’s all surface, no depth. At least, that’s what we’ve seen when certain directors let her take that idea and run with it. Hence the miracle of her collaboration with Stillman, whose The Last Days of Disco (1998) gave Beckinsale her first seriously great role, and whose more recent Love & Friendship is a comparably rich, virtuosic turn almost 20 years later. Beckinsale is a presence who seems most alive when a director doesn’t take her intelligence for granted—which is rare.”

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BRISBANE, Australia —
Kei Nishikori corrected his bad record in Brisbane International semifinals by beating U. S. Open champion Stan Wawrinka 7-6 (3), 6-3 on Saturday to reach the final for the first time at the season-opening tournament.
Wawrinka, who won the Chennai tournament in India in the first week of the season for the three previous years, had treatment on his lower left leg at the end of the first set tiebreaker and twice again in the second set.
Third-seeded Nishikori took full advantage, converting his first break point in the second set to take a 3-1 lead when Wawrinka missed consecutive backhands. The No. 2-seeded Wawrinka broke back immediately, but dropped his serve again in the next game.
Wawrinka beat Nishikori in the semifinals of the U. S. Open last year; his only win in their last four matches. With his win Saturday, Nishikori has leveled up his career head-to-head record against the three-time major winner at 4-4.
Nishikori was making his seventh trip to Brisbane, and playing a semifinal for the fourth time. The Japanese star is still chasing his first Grand Slam title, with his best run at a major remaining his appearance in the 2014 U. S. Open final.
Defending champion and No.1-seeded Milos Raonic will play seventh-seeded Grigor Dimitrov for the other spot in the final. Raonic, who beat Rafael Nadal in the quarterfinals, finished 2016 ranked at No. 3 but hasn’t added another title since winning in Brisbane for the first time.
U. S. Open finalist Karolina Pliskova is playing unseeded Alize Cornet in the women’s final on Saturday night.
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The government of Shinzo Abe recently announced record increases in military spending, citing China’s continued claim over disputed territories in the South China Sea and North Korea’s undeterred missile threats and tests.
Japan said regional cooperation was vital to better protect the rule of law in the region.
Pyongyang has been ramping up its war rhetoric, coinciding with increased incidences of missile tests, coupled with escalated threats to the United States and neighboring South Korea.
The new partnership will also focus on enhancing responsiveness to natural disasters and piracy, local media report .
The initiative is expected to become operational in April and will also convene security forums to discuss strategy. Thailand and Myanmar are already said to be on the invitee list for the first round.
On Friday, Tokyo announced  agreement had been reached with Paris to start negotiations on military cooperation between the two nations.
Under Abe, Japan has been concentrating on building up its defenses along the southern edge of the East China Sea.
Japan plans to spend record budget increases on mobile missile batteries, amphibious vehicles, and other equipment better suited to a mobile force, according to Reuters.
Billions of yen will also be spent on six new submarines, which are well suited to defending the islets in the South China Sea.

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