To what extent are your problems my problems? To what extent are Syria's troubles Japan's?

To no extent at all, judging by the paltry number of refugees Japan admits. Europe, of course, is engulfed. But that's Europe's problem.

Is it still possible to think that way? Sadako Ogata, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 1991 to 2001, in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun last month, deplored Japan's chilly aloofness from the world's biggest refugee crisis since World War II. (She spoke before Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's pledge of generous financial aid to refugees, but probably wouldn't have changed her tone much on that account.) Japan, she said, is still "an island country," an anomaly in an age of advancing globalization and shrinking distances — but Japan does have a long "island country" history behind it, and history is not lightly escaped from.