Charting a Course on Immune Response

[from LLNL’s Science & Technology Review, by Sheridan Hyland]

Lawrence Livermore scientists Dina Weilhammer (right), Feliza Bourguet (middle), and Nicholas Hum (left) prep samples for analysis to study Rift Valley fever virus behavior and immune response.

Respiratory diseases can balloon from a few cases to epidemics or pandemics, making them a consideration in national security planning and preparation. Understanding how a pathogen behaves in different circumstances and environments is complex and depends upon many factors, including genetics. COVID-19 remains a stark example of how understanding of pathogen behavior can be tenuous. Scientists continue to grapple with answering questions of why some carriers are asymptomatic while others produce symptoms of the disease, why some of the infected suffer the effects of long COVID while others do not, and why some individuals passed away and others survived. COVID-19 is only one example of a pathogen that raises questions among medical researchers: Valley Fever, variations of encephalitis, and other diseases also present additional challenges. 

Lawrence Livermore scientists are taking a comprehensive approach to understanding pathogen behavior and immune system response, building on past research that focused on individual molecules and interactions. Dina Weilhammer, a staff scientist in Livermore’s Biosciences Division, explains, “We’ve made significant inroads in understanding how the immune system recognizes foreign agents such as bacteria and viruses, as well as how the immune system can separate what should be eliminated and what should be protected. Today’s biotechnology tools can overcome earlier limitations. They enable us to interrogate the immune system more holistically than ever before to address questions and uncover unexpected considerations and answers.”

Through its research, the Livermore team—which includes Weilhammer, Nicholas Hum, Aimy Sebastian, Oscar Davalos, Margarita Rangel, Deepa Murugesh, Bria Gorman, Gregory Lum, Nicole Leon, Patrick Hurley, and Ashlee Phillips—is sharpening its understanding of the differences between one immune system that clears infection compared to another that cannot. Using a combination of controlled pathogen exposure; single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq); spatial transcriptomics to collect data; and computational platforms to organize, analyze, and interpret the data, the Laboratory is developing an immune system atlas that could help the medical field better understand and predict disease outcomes in the future.

Livermore’s biologists combine multiple tools and research methods— controlled pathogen exposure, single-cell RNA sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, and AI integration of data—to understand how different pathogens that impact the lungs, brain, and blood behave in different environments and how an individual’s immune system responds. As studies progress, the data could be used to predict disease outcomes in individuals and offer therapeutic screening, validation, and treatment options.

Mapping the Methodology

To address their research questions, scientists developing the immune atlas have focused on pathogens that impact the lungs and brain. “We have viral, fungal, and bacterial models of disease that specifically target the lungs,” says Hum, a staff scientist. “At the same time, many diseases do not start in the lungs but can still affect them over time through systemic immune and inflammatory responses. The next natural question is how signals from elsewhere in the body reshape the lung environment and influence lung function.” Data from multiple techniques combine to provide a fuller picture of immune system response.

Using uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP), Livermore biologists can create a visualization of cell clusters in experimental groups. Pictured here, a variety of cells in mice have been identified in a healthy (left) and infected (right) lung, including epithelial cells in the airways; endothelial cells in the blood vessels; fibroblasts that provide structural integrity and tissue remodeling; and immune cells (lymphoid and myeloid), which identify defense and inflammatory response. Myeloid cells demonstrate the largest difference observed between healthy and infected cell tissue.

Experiments in which mice are exposed to a known pathogen under managed conditions (controlled pathogen exposure), enable researchers to study the development of an infection and the immune system response. By controlling the exact strain of the pathogen, the dosage levels, routes of exposure, timing, host factors, and environment, the team can establish potential cause and effect related to the immune system’s immediate response after infection, which cell populations respond first, how the disease progresses, and what leads to recovery or more severe illness. Another tool, scRNA-seq, measures gene expression in individual cells rather than averaging signals across an entire tissue sample, enabling researchers to identify which cells are inflammatory compared to which cells are behaving normally. In traditional bulk RNA sequencing, RNA extracted from thousands or millions of cells is pooled together before sequencing, obscuring differences among rare or functionally distinct cell populations. In contrast, scRNA-seq preserves cell-specific transcriptional information, enabling researchers to resolve how immune and nonimmune cells respond uniquely to infection and injury. To perform the analysis, lung tissue is first dissociated into a suspension of individual cells. Using a microfluidic droplet platform, single cells are encapsulated together with gel beads carrying unique molecular barcodes. Inside each droplet, messenger RNA released from the lysed (ruptured or broken) lung cell is captured and reverse-transcribed into complementary DNA (cDNA). During this process, each transcript receives both a cell-specific barcode and a unique molecular identifier (UMI), allowing researchers to distinguish where RNA molecules originated while also correcting for amplification bias introduced during polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification.

Livermore’s high-performance computing tools enable visualization of pathogens and immune response in tissue cells, as well as patterns of host responses across different disease states. The UMAP plot pictured here shows cell behavior across healthy and diseased conditions (from left to right: viral, bacterial, or fungal infection) in a mouse lung, based on single-cell RNA sequencing data from animal studies. Each dot represents a single cell, colored by its general cell-type identity. Spatial transcriptomic maps can also reveal the cellular neighborhoods that emerge during disease.

After barcoding and amplification, the team breaks the droplets and sequences the pooled cDNA libraries at high depth, generating hundreds of millions to billions of reads per experiment. Using computational pipelines to align the reads to the genome, Livermore’s scientists reconstruct transcriptomes for tens of thousands of individual cells simultaneously. The team uses graph-based clustering and dimensionality-reduction approaches such as uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP) to identify distinct cellular populations in infected and noninfected cells and visualize transcriptional relationships across experimental conditions.

A third method the team applies is spatial transcriptomics, which measures gene activity in specific locations in the tissue. Cells do not act in isolation from each other, and in the case of infection, cancer, or tissue repair, location in the tissue is important. For example, a macrophage near a blood vessel could behave differently from one next to a damaged epithelium (densely packed cells that cover external body surfaces such as skin, line internal cavities and organs, and form glands). In infection studies, spatial transcriptomics, a visual representation of the location and clusters of different cell populations, can show where inflammatory cells accumulate, where antiviral or antimicrobial genes are activated, how immune cells organize around lesions and infected areas, how responses differ between damaged tissue and nearby healthy tissue, and how cell neighborhoods change over time. In the lung specifically, spatial transcriptomics can reveal inflammatory cells clustered around infected airways, repair programs in surrounding tissue, and distinguish immune zones in severe compared to mild diseases.

Exploring New Ground

Livermore’s biologists have conducted several individual studies on Valley fever (Coccidioides posadasii), Rift Valley fever virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, bacterial pneumonia (Streptococcus pneumoniae), and COVID-19. “Our work didn’t start with the intent to generate an immune atlas,” says Sebastian, a Livermore staff scientist. “We were working on individual projects and asking specific questions. However, as we started to generate more data, we began to discuss standardizing the process of how and when we collect data and putting it into one big data set.” The immune atlas combines the data gathered from cells’ immune responses to the different diseases and then uses computational software to build visualization tools that map the varying responses across infected and noninfected cells. 

Using scRNA-seq and spatial transcriptomics, the team sought to answer how the immune system responds inside an infected organ and why that response shifts from protective to damaging. “As we pulled together the data from millions of reads, we saw what cells were doing for tens of thousands of reads compared to other cells,” says Hum. “By putting the pictures together, we can tell the difference between a T cell and a normal epithelial cell, for example. And from this stage, once we have the resolution of what the cells are doing and how many there are, we can start comparing all the different time points, trajectories, and infection models.” Through several studies, the Livermore team found that severe disease is often driven not just by the pathogen itself but by specific immune programs that become harmful. The team’s methods helped identify which cells responded first (such as microglia in the brain and resident lung macrophages and stromal cells in the lungs), which cells entered later, where the cells went in the tissue, and whether they were helping or harming the individual.

To analyze this data and compare results across pathogens and different parts of the tissues being studied, Livermore’s team used a variety of computational tools. In each study, they collected data at multiple infection stages, looking for when changes occurred and when recovery signatures began to appear. Since every experiment was slightly different, the team integrated and visualized the data sets such that they could be superimposed over each other and compared. “As we quantify what cells enter and at what point in time, we can study how their profiles change,” says Sebastian. “For example, in a blood system, monocytes enter and differentiate into multiple subtypes. Some of these are highly correlated with better outcomes, while others are not. We want to identify what’s considered a good response compared to a bad response.” The comparisons indicated that the type of cells entering the lung in response to infection can influence the outcome.

Team members Bria Gorman and Aimy Sebastian examine spatial transcriptomic data from a mouse lung.

A series of computational tools have helped parse and present the data, including both R– and Python-based approaches for scRNA-seq, spatial transcriptomics, and multi-omic integration analyses. For scRNA-seq analyses, the team uses Seurat in R and Scanpy in Python, while spatial transcriptomic analyses are performed using Seurat in R and Squidpy in Python. Additional tools such as Scenic, Slingshot, and CellChat are used to identify gene regulatory patterns, examine changes in cell states and differentiation, and explore how cells may communicate with one another. Graph-based clustering methods were applied to define cellular populations, and UMAP is used for dimensionality reduction and visualization of cellular and molecular patterns across experimental conditions.

While still in the early stages of research, the team is already seeing interesting, sometimes unexpected, results. One macrophage population repeatedly shows up in multiple infection models, particularly lethal infections. These macrophages express many extracellular matrix proteins and matrix-remodeling enzymes that are more commonly associated with cell types such as fibroblasts. “We don’t know exactly what they do yet, but we can clearly see a correlation between some lethal infections and macrophages coming in and moving toward this kind of profile,” says Sebastian.

Charting a New Course

As the Laboratory looks toward future research opportunities, a key focus is to understand what patterns and results in mice can translate to humans. Weilhammer says, “Comparing infections in which the test subjects recover from the disease versus succumb to it is useful. In our mouse models of COVID, we saw young animals recover from infections while aged animals did not. However, that’s not the whole story—we’re also interested in how the genetic background of the host can impact the trajectory of the disease.” In the COVID-19 pandemic, even though younger people suffered less severe illness compared to more elderly people, this outcome was not universally the case—many young people also had severe infections, difficult recoveries, and fatalities. “We think it’s highly likely that there’s a strong genetic component behind why some people do well following infection and others do not,” continues Weilhammer. 

In future studies, the team plans to integrate AI and deep learning models more significantly into their data analysis process and to help better predict an individual’s treatment needs and recovery path. “The basic research is difficult to pursue unless someone has all the experimental and computational capabilities that we have at Lawrence Livermore,” says Hum. “We’re still working toward the point where we can identify which illness someone has and how severe it might be from just a cough or other common symptom.”

[Archived PDF of article]

Does History Operate on a Long Fuse? Evidence from Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The Manor orbits two Polish rebellions (1830 and 1863).

Author’s Note to the Original Edition

The Manor was written between 1953 and 1955. As with many of my stories and all my novels (with the exception of Satan in Goray, which I wrote while still in Warsaw), it was first serialized in The Jewish Daily Forward. Although The Manor was published many years after The Family Moskat, it portrays an earlier period—the epoch between the Polish insurrection of 1863 and the end of the nineteenth century. It was the era of gas lamps, the time when the Poles had finally become resigned to their loss of independence and turned to a kind of national positivism. Poland now began to emerge as an industrial country; railroads were built, factories were opened, and the cities grew rapidly. The Jews, who until 1863 for the most part still lived in a ghetto atmosphere, now began to play an important role in Polish industry, commerce, the arts and sciences. All the spiritual and intellectual ideas that triumphed in the modern era had their roots in the world of that time—socialism and nationalism, Zionism and assimilationism, nihilism and anarchism, suffragettism, atheism, the weakening of the family bond, free love, and even the beginnings of Fascism.

The Estate, a sequel to and the conclusion of The Manor, ends in the last years of the nineteenth century—an epoch when humanism undertook to practice what it had preached for generations. What happened in the village of Jampol, and what was discussed by a small group of self-educated youths in furnished rooms in Warsaw, became the basis of the social upheavals and the terrible disillusions of our present time.

Isaac Bashevis Singer. The Manor. Avon Books, 1979.

If you look at his sentence above describing “All the spiritual and intellectual ideas”, you may start to see what we describe as the long fuse of history. When we are in the present, a lot of the issues from the past emerge again in the future. Reality is such that there is no permanent yesterday.

The novel is also haunted by another kind of deep change, the rise of the world market or globalization.

The novel’s protagonist, Jacoby, acquires a hill, which allows him to begin his fortune with a quarry:

The peasants complained that the Jew was contaminating the Polish countryside, putrefying the air, but the authorities ignored them. Poland, after the insurrection, was full of activity, as if awakened from a long slumber. Workshops sprang up, mines were dug, forests cut down, and railroads built. Polish products, textiles, leather goods, brushes, sieves, sheepskin coats, glassware appeared on the world market. As soon as the Jews were granted permission to reside freely in the cities, the country began to grow.

It was said that Calman had been blessed by a holy man. A building boom was in progress, and his lime quarry yielded immense profits. Scores of Jews and Gentiles earned their livelihood from it. Calman purchased horses and wagons and built a smithy. As if all this were not enough, the Russian government decided to build a railway line through Jampol. …

Isaac Bashevis Singer. The Manor. Avon Books, 1979. p. 9.

Accompanying the rebellions and the commerce are a set of perpetual questions that have yet to be definitively answered.

Does a live carp suffer agonies when it is scaled and cut to pieces for the Sabbath meal? Why are some people poor and others rich? What was there before the universe? Does a goat have a soul? Was Adam a Jew? Did Eve wear a bonnet? And he was constantly finding contradictions in the Holy Writ, pointing out that in one place it is stated that a man is punished only for his own sins, but in another, that the third and fourth generations must suffer for them; and first the Lord is said to be invisible, then it is written that the elders while they ate and drank saw the Lord. For another thing, Ezriel criticized the prophet Elisha for causing the children to be attacked by bears; the boy felt bitterly reproachful toward King David for slaying Uriah the Hittite, and he wept and blasphemed when he read how Abraham sent his concubine Hagar into the desert with nothing but a jug of water, and how she almost perished of thirst.

Isaac Bashevis Singer. The Manor. Avon Books, 1979. pp. 23-24.

Consider specifically the question of what was before the universe. Today our greatest cosmologists and physicists continue to ask this very question. This confirms a famous quote from William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Henry Huiyao Wang: A Xi-Trump-Putin summit in Shenzhen could kick-start peace in Ukraine

CCG’s President says there will be no diplomatic masterstroke in Ukraine’s absence, but serious consideration of a ceasefire can lay the groundwork for peace

[from the Center for China & Globalization, 31 October 2026]

Below is the latest opinion column by Henry Huiyao Wang, founder and President, Center for China and Globalization, published in the South China Morning Post.

At the recent Valdai Discussion Club, I asked Russian President Vladimir Putin if he would be open to meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Shenzhen. I also asked, more broadly, what role China could play in promoting peace in Ukraine, mediating and contributing to peacekeeping.

Putin was receptive, warmly welcoming the idea of a China-hosted meeting. Trump, too, has expressed a willingness to meet Xi and Putin. These expressions of openness offer an opportunity we must seize in pursuit of peace.

Some in the United States and Europe question the value of such a summit. They may fear restoring Putin’s standing or normalising the conflict without yielding any real progress towards an end to the war. That risk is still real but these largely Western fears must be tempered by the very real, very human cost of letting the war continue unabated.

From the very beginning of the war, I have been arguing that China has a constructive role to play. In March 2022, less than three weeks into Russia’s invasion, I wrote an article in The New York Times titled “It’s Time to Offer Russia an Offramp. China Can Help With That.”

In August last year, I extended that train of logic in Foreign Policy, where I proposed a seven-party format for peace negotiations and suggested that a peacekeeping force include troops from European and BRICS countries. A meeting of the three leaders in Shenzhen could help lay the groundwork for these broader diplomatic and peacekeeping efforts.

Without Ukraine’s participation, such a meeting is unlikely to produce a diplomatic masterstroke that ends the war. But the three leaders need not put the war to rest at a table in Shenzhen to make progress. Serious consideration of a ceasefire along the current line of contact—an approach Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has supported—could give peace efforts fresh momentum, leaving the final status of disputed territories for subsequent negotiations.

Further agreement could be sought on the protection of nuclear facilities, or a mutual end to strikes on energy infrastructure, new prisoner exchanges or improved humanitarian access. Of course, issues of sovereignty, security guarantees, Russia’s security concerns and Europe’s security commitments would remain. But these need not all be resolved at once before a ceasefire can begin.

Already, years of war have inflicted immense suffering on both Russia and Ukraine. Neither side achieved its objectives, and both need a dignified way out that protects their core interests. Thus, we must open a path towards peace without requiring either side to concede defeat. China could help bridge this gap by bringing Xi, Trump and Putin together in Shenzhen to explore how a ceasefire and wider negotiations involving Ukraine might work.

The United Nations could stand at the core of such an arrangement by monitoring any ceasefire and preventing a return to fighting by physical peacekeeping if the parties are so inclined.

For a broader negotiation on settlement, I find myself returning to a seven-party format that would bring together the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—China, France, Russia, Britain and the U.S.—alongside Ukraine and the European Union. An understanding reached in Shenzhen could give momentum to this broader negotiating process and free up the Security Council for action.

A peacekeeping force composed entirely of NATO or European troops might be unacceptable to Russia. Yet a mission without European participation would struggle to reassure Ukraine and its neighbours. Any workable arrangement would need to address both concerns.

In my Foreign Policy article, I proposed a peacekeeping force drawing troops from five European countries—Germany, France, Britain, Poland and Italy—and five members of the BRICS grouping, such as China, India and Brazil. And while the exact formulation, from the composition and mandate to the terms of deployment, would need to be negotiated with the consent of Russia and Ukraine, and the agreement of the contributing countries, the core idea remains sound.

As a permanent member of the UN Security Council and the largest contributor of peacekeeping personnel among the five permanent members, China is well positioned to help. Its distinctive role in the global economy and dialogue with Russia, Ukraine, the U.S. and Europe, give it channels through which to coax the parties towards peace. But this process must begin somewhere, and that somewhere could be Shenzhen.

Nor should APEC be the end of the diplomatic effort. With an understanding reached by the leaders in Shenzhen, the Security Council may pick up the momentum by advancing ceasefire and peacekeeping proposals. The Group of 20 could then join the effort to rally support from major economies with an interest in maintaining the deal. Each would play a different role and would not be tasked with settling the entire conflict.

China’s role in the Saudi Arabia-Iran rapprochement in 2023 showed Beijing’s ability to open a door after years of enmity. The Ukraine war is different, and there can be no guarantee of a similar outcome. But diplomacy must begin somewhere, particularly when fighting has brought such destruction.

The central question is whether such a meeting could help bring the war to an end. In that light, any gain in prestige for an individual leader is almost irrelevant. And if the three leaders could agree on practical steps towards peace, they would give the United Nations and the wider international community a material basis upon which peace could be built.

From the Corner Café to the Global Market: Building an Inclusive Intellectual Property System Across APEC

[from APEC News, by María Gloria Riethmüller Harland, Singapore]

Every day, I pass by small businesses that bring life to our neighborhoods. A corner café with its own blend, a family bakery known for its special recipe, a local designer selling clothes under her own brand. Few of them would think of themselves as intellectual property owners, yet in many ways they are.

Their innovative brands, recipes and ideas are often their most valuable assets. But for most small businesses, intellectual property still feels like something meant for large companies with legal teams.

Over the last two years of chairing the APEC Intellectual Property Rights Experts’ Group (IPEG), one conviction has only grown stronger. Intellectual property should not be a privilege for a few. It should be the foundation that lets anyone with a good idea earn from its expression and grow. It should spark more creativity across our region. It should help build new businesses, new jobs and shared prosperity.

In practice, for a small business owner, the system can feel complex, costly and hard to navigate. The landscape is also changing quickly, as new technologies and online trade reshape how ideas are made, shared and protected.

When IPEG was created in 1997, its focus was making global trade rules on intellectual property work between economies. Over time, its work has grown to place small businesses, along with women, young innovators and local communities, at the center.

Our work over the past two years has been about making that shift real.

Small businesses, big ideas

Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) account for more than 97 percent of businesses in the APEC region. The challenge is not whether they have valuable ideas, they do. The challenge is turning those ideas into growth.

Intellectual property can help small businesses protect what makes them different, secure finance and expand into new markets with confidence.

The difference can be striking. A study [archived PDF] by IP Australia found that new small businesses that filed for intellectual property in their first year were twice as likely to achieve strong sales and employment growth. Yet the study found that only a small fraction of MSMEs own intellectual property.

That is why small businesses sit at the heart of IPEG’s 2025-2026 Work Plan.

Some of the most valuable lessons came from simply listening. Last year August in Incheon, I moderated our Policy Dialogue on Intellectual Property for Business, with a focus on SMEs. Our conversations were honest and practical, from making the system more user-friendly for small business owners to the opportunities e-commerce opens for them.

Conversations matter, but only if they lead to change. This one did. Following the dialogue, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) offered member economies the opportunity to embark on a project, asking small businesses directly how they understand, use and perceive intellectual property, and what stands in their way. Such projects aim to help offices and policymakers across the region build systems and support around real needs, not assumptions.

When we met in Dalian this August, the progress was clear. Some economies shared how they are running training workshops that help firms, especially technology startups, identify and actively manage their intellectual property strategically. Others are offering support in valuing patents, so small businesses can use their inventions to secure loans.

Step by step, intellectual property is becoming a tool small business owners and innovators can actually use, not just one they hear about.

Keeping pace with technology

Technology is changing how ideas come to a reality and are sold. But it is also changing how we protect those inventions, giving intellectual property offices new tools to work faster, smarter while making systems simpler for business owners.

Take patents, which protect new inventions. To get one, an inventor has to prove their idea is genuinely new. With a record 3.7 million patent applications filed worldwide in 2024, that is no small task.

Artificial intelligence search tools can now help compare applications more thoroughly rather than simple keyword matches. Chatbots walk first-time applicants through the search process. New translation tools make it simpler to understand patents filed across the region.

For a small business, this is far from a technical detail. Faster and more accurate searches mean knowing early whether an idea is genuinely new, before spending money on an application and investing in their venture.

Used well, technology can turn a complex process into a quicker, clearer path to protection.

Every idea counts

But a system is only as strong as the people it reaches.

Women, for example, accounted for just 18 percent [archived PDF] of inventors named in international patent applications in 2024. For the people and communities behind unprotected good inventions, that means missed income, missed recognition and missed growth.

Changing that takes partnership. By enhancing dialogue with APEC’s Policy Partnership on Women and the Economy, IPEG can build women entrepreneurs’ know-how on using intellectual property to protect their brands and designs, helping them to grow internationally.

Every region also has its own valuable cultural or geographical assets, while communities also carry traditions passed down over generations, from recipes and crafts to songs and stories. They are not just part of communities’ heritage and pride. For many, these traditions and assets can become sources of income. Intellectual property plays a vital role here too.

Geographical indications, labels that tie a product’s name to its place of origin, are one way to do that. Across the region, they are helping more small local businesses and women-led enterprises stand out from imitations, reach new buyers and become more competitive.

Copyright is reaching folk art too, from traditional stories to music and designs. Clear rights give communities the confidence to share their traditions widely and give new generations a reason to keep creating with them.

Inclusion is not a side project for intellectual property. It is the test of whether the system works at all. When intellectual property reaches more people, more creations reach the world, benefiting workers, MSMEs, communities and consumers. That simple belief has guided IPEG’s work for the past two years.

In August, I chaired my final IPEG meeting in Dalian. What I value most is not any single outcome, but the spirit behind our work.

IPEG is a space for dialogue. A space to ensure intellectual property drives resilience, innovation and growth. A space where economies with different experiences work together to make intellectual property more meaningful and accessible.

That space matters more than ever. New technologies, new business models and new forms of creativity are creating both opportunities and challenges. I encourage IPEG to keep using this forum not only to exchange information, but to thinking creatively about where APEC cooperation can make more tangible differences.

Because in the end, the measure of our work is simple. It is whether the corner café, the family bakery and the young designer down the street can turn their innovations into a lasting livelihood.

María Gloria Riethmüller is the Chair of the APEC Intellectual Property Rights Experts’ Group (IPEG) and Legal Advisor at the Intellectual Property Department of Chile’s Undersecretariat of International Economic Affairs.

India in Transition: “The Rain that Chases Rhinos”: Community Crisis Communication in the Eastern Himalayas  

[by Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, Center for the Advanced Study of India]

In the plains of Assam, different kinds of rain are often distinguished through vivid local expressions that reflect their intensity and impact on everyday life. One such term is “sagoli-kheda-borokhun” (the rain that chases goats). It refers to a light shower, enough to send goats hurrying into their sheds while people continue with their daily activities. As the rainfall intensifies, it may be described as “goru-kheda-borokhun” (cow-chasing rain), followed by “manuh-kheda-borokhun” (people-chasing rain), when even humans seek shelter from the downpour. At the extreme end of this scale of vernacular expressions of rainfall intensity lies “gor-kheda-borokhun” (the rain that chases away rhinos), evoking a deluge so intense that even Assam’s iconic one-horned rhinoceroses would retreat and look for shelter. With rapid urbanization and changing rainfall patterns, such beautiful expressions of rain have lost continuous usage, especially among the younger generation, who no longer name types of rains.

These expressions reveal the richly textured ways in which communities inhabiting the water-abundant landscapes of Northeast India have understood and interpreted rainfall. Their environmental imagination is shaped not only by the rains themselves but also by the sounds, movements, and rhythms of the ecosystems around them. Among the most evocative signs of the approaching monsoon was the chorus of frogs inhabiting the “pukhuris” (ponds), “khaals” (natural drainage channels), and “beels” (wetlands). Their persistent croaking, described locally as the rhythmic “tur-tu-rai” of an assembled army of frogs, would fill the night air. Hearing this familiar symphony, people would often remark that the rains were on their way.

In today’s times, such soundscapes have diminished considerably and the traditional knowledge of being able to predict rains by observing sounds and signs in nature have not been passed on. The familiar chorus of frogs on humid nights has grown noticeably quieter as ponds have deteriorated, wetlands have been drained, and traditional water bodies have gradually disappeared from the landscape. Here, I look at the languages and imaginations of communities, and how these interact with the annual rains and storms along the Eastern Himalayas, how they keep record of the changes in the climate patterns in their community lives through their vernacular depictions of storms and rains, and how the current climate crisis has clouded their traditional communication methods.

Water-Abundant Worlds

The Himalayan river-systems and the plains they nourish have always been regarded as a water-abundant environment, with monsoons, storms and rains forming an essential part of the lives and imaginations of communities living there. Nation-state borders, which straddle river-systems and regions across the Himalayas, bring in an additional layer of complexity to the various discourses of climate change disasters and patterns in the region, which are already exacerbated by infrastructural interventions on the river systems.

The languages and imaginations of Himalayan communities through which they describe the monsoons, climate change, storms, and rainfall patterns in their daily lives and natural environment, and how they are shaped by the interventions and narratives deployed by the nation-state in the Eastern Himalayas serve as critical crisis communication, often proving more useful and timely than government communication. The monsoon rains that stream in from the Indian Ocean currents and extend up to the heights of the easternmost fringes of the Himalayas bring most of the Himalayan river-systems to life. The monsoon clouds, after they enter Northeast India, play a veritable ping-pong between the low-lying rolling hills of the Patkai ranges and the towering eastern Himalayan mountain ranges, and the rains and storms that ensue from this match nourish the various communities, sustain the forests, and shape the landscape. This interaction forms an archive of climate disasters in the region.

Modern meteorological forecasting methods have greatly improved with scientific progress and modelling and availability of long-term data. However, from my research, it has been evident that the medium-range and long-range predictions of storms and rainfall patterns have low reliability at the local level, meaning state-led communication methods are not effective or timely. There are externalities of data collection challenges and reliability of what actually constitutes long-term data and the rapid infrastructure push and anthropogenic changes in the context of the fragile and ever-crumbling-and-forming Eastern Himalayas.

Bordoisila is the personified name given to an annual spring storm that ravages the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas, often spanning across Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Bhutan. The community memory of Bordoisila is archived over time through stories of the storm returning to “her maternal home,” Assam, to celebrate Bohag Bihu, the mid-April spring festival, and accounting for the ferocity and devastation it regularly brings along, as well as the variation in timing of the storm’s arrival and when “she returns” after celebrating. Communities provide token offerings of festive food and clothing to Bordoisila, imploring the storm to pass by gently in “her path.” The variation in timing and ferocity of the storm is recorded in recent community memory as the personified storm managing to come home early this year as “she got to leave early from her workplace.” Originating in the Chotanagpur plateau and gathering force from the Bay of Bengal, she again returns in an angry mood as if “she was not treated well by her mother” with festive goodies and good food.

Personified Storms

Over years of research in the region, I have noted that communities rarely rely on modern meteorological forecasting information for the stormy season. They know it only by community memory and their sense of the ferocity of the storm when it passes by—among a series of spring storms—and declare that “she has finally arrived” and “she will soon return after celebrating Bihu.” It is along the trail of Bordoisila that the first wave of floods also arrives in Assam, and the traditional knowledge repository known as “Dakor Boson,” a collection of vernacular prose and poetry sayings, depicting how the coming monsoon and the ensuing agricultural cropping cycle will span out. The first floods were always celebrated with the Bihu dance, and the storm Bordoisila is revered despite its ferocity, as it brings the rain and nutrient-rich silt to nourish the overall landscape. However, with climate change and anthropogenic interventions, the language of climate crises has changed from a sense of celebration and reverence to utter despair.

Over the past several decades, Northeast India has witnessed profound shifts in its monsoon patterns. Periods of unusually intense rainfall have triggered devastating floods, while prolonged dry spells have brought drought-like conditions to many areas. In response to persistent droughts, communities across Assam have continued to observe customs such as frog-marriage ceremonies, invoking these creatures regarded as messengers of the rain-gods, to restore the rains through their renewed croaking. In Meghalaya, rainfall that used to last nine nights and days in a continuous rhythmic pattern, known as “slap-khyndai-miet-khyndai-sngi,” has, over recent years, lost its original community language emphasis, as such long-enduring rainfall patterns have diminished greatly.

Among the Idu-Mishmi of eastern Arunachal Pradesh, traditional ritual specialists are called upon to communicate with rain spirits, seeking their intervention both when the rains fail to arrive and when incessant downpours raise fears of catastrophic flooding. The Idu-Mishmi term for rain, “ayyo or ayyoyo,” carries deep cultural significance within these practices. Jibi Pulu, an Idu-Mishmi community leader and environmental activist, points to how different kinds of rainfall were once understood to perform distinct ecological functions in the forests of the Dibang Valley. Certain rains signaled the shedding of leaves, others supported flowering cycles, while some heralded the arrival of migratory birds that seasonally visited the region’s rich forest ecosystems. However, he observed that such patterns have become increasingly difficult to anticipate, as deforestation, climate change, and human intervention have disrupted environmental rhythms that earlier generations could interpret with a high confidence.

Many Idu-Mishmi elders similarly attribute the growing unpredictability of rainfall and the increasing occurrence of extreme floods on the Dibang River and its tributaries to a deterioration in the relationship between people and the natural world. They regard practices such as the indiscriminate slaughter of animals and the growing trend of winter picnics on dry riverbeds (where meals are prepared directly on the exposed riverbed) as acts that offend river spirits. In their understanding, these transgressions disturb the balance between humans and the spiritual forces inhabiting the landscape, contributing to erratic weather patterns and destructive flooding events. Some historic flooding events are referred to by communities with names of where such flooding originated, such as the “China-paani” of the year 2000 and the recent episodes of “Bhutan-baanpaani” along the Bhutan–Assam border. This vocabulary has expanded to include specific dam-induced floods such as Ranganadi-floods in Assam.

Culturally Grounded Approaches

The diverse linguistic expressions, traditional knowledge systems, and lived experiences through which indigenous communities across Northeast India understand rainfall, storms, climate variability, and recurring flood events deserve to be documented, connected, and amplified within broader conversations on environmental democracy and transboundary cooperation. Bringing these perspectives together can help foster more inclusive dialogues across the Eastern Himalayas and the Patkai mountain ranges, enabling local communities to participate meaningfully in decision-making processes concerning ecology, environmental governance, infrastructure development, disaster preparedness, crisis communication, and other issues that directly shape their everyday lives and livelihoods. For generations, communities have relied on close observation of their surroundings to interpret changes in weather and rainfall patterns, rhythms of rivers, and flood cycles.

As environmental transformations become more pronounced and traditional indicators grow increasingly uncertain, their ability to understand and articulate these changes offers valuable insights into the realities of climate change on the ground. Recognizing and engaging with such lived experiences, local knowledge, and environmental imaginations is, therefore, essential to strengthening civil society participation and building more democratic, responsive, and culturally grounded approaches to environmental governance in the region. Modern meteorological forecasting methods need to learn from traditional wisdom and social innovation and the vast archive of knowledge which have recorded past disasters and also can predict future ones. The rapid pace and scale of transformation along the Eastern Himalayas are rendering traditional knowledge systems incapable of providing climate solutions.

Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman completed his doctoral research on the Brahmaputra River Basin geopolitics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, and is currently a Research Associate at Heinrich Böll Stiftung, India and Visiting Associate Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi, India. 

All photos courtesy of Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman.

[This is the second in a multi-part series published in collaboration with the Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, at the Shiv Nadar University, Delhi NCR, a research center focused on the economy, borders, identities, environment, and regional geopolitics of the wider Himalayan region including the Hindu Kush and the Karakoram.]

Chance & Necessity: Another Look

In everyday experience, we think of chance as what governs gambling, barring schemes to harness probability in their favor. Necessity, on the other hand, brings to mind the air we breathe, food and/or water. Previously, we discussed Jacques Monod as an early explorer of the collision of probability and chance in biology. In Laws of the Game: How the Principles of Nature Govern Chance (German: Das Spiel: Naturgesetze steuern den Zufall), Manfred Eigen & Ruthild Winkler critique Jacques Monod, stating that his innovation was that the substrate of all biology is chance and accident. You may note that the subtitle of Laws of the Game states the opposite.

This gets even more subtle if you consider Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. He emphasizes the role of playful behavior as the university that educates us in the connection between chance and necessity.

Foreword

The lay reader interested in the natural sciences is exposed to a constantly rising flood of information. He may often feel himself cast in the role of a judge before whom different authors appear like competing litigants, each of whom hopes to be found in the right. If these authors are sufficiently clever in presenting their cases, the reader may be swayed by each in turn. But then a reviewer appears on the scene and objects that each cannot be as right as the other, particularly when one author’s claims are the exact opposite of another’s. The reader has no choice but to find the reviewer right, too.

This familiar anecdote, which we have slightly adapted to suit our purposes, contains a moral: Everyone could in fact be right if each one did not insist on being the only one to be right.

Everything that happens in our world resembles a vast game in which nothing is determined in advance but the rules, and only the rules are open to objective understanding. The game itself is not identical with either its rules or with the sequence of chance happenings that determine the course of play. It is neither the one nor the other because it is both at once. It has as many aspects as we project onto it in the form of questions.

We see this game as a natural phenomenon that, in its dichotomy of chance and necessity, underlies all events. Our interpretation of games and play thus goes far beyond Huizinga’s, which considers play only in its relation to human behavior. In applying the concept of play to art, we come much closer to Adorno’s views, which clearly disagree with Huizinga‘s identification of play and art.

The considerations that gave rise to this book go back to the molecular theory of evolution worked out a few years ago. It also draws on the models developed in connection with that theory, models for simulating phenomena like equilibrium, selection, and growth, all of which are based on natural laws. Although this book makes frequent use of examples drawn from the field of biology, its scope is much broader and includes general scientific, philosophical, sociological, and aesthetic perspectives. Our main purpose is to show play in its symbolic nature and in all its metamorphoses. We also make use of its different aspects to illuminate both our scientific understanding of the world and various philosophical positions. We are aware that this brings us into conflict with those who attribute validity to one and only one aspect.

The actual writing of the book was preceded by innumerable talks and discussions with friends and colleagues during our Engadin winter seminars, on hikes and ski tours in the mountains, and, occasionally, over a bottle of wine. We first thought a dialogue would be the appropriate form for our exchange of ideas, but we soon abandoned this concept. The classical dialogues are without exception artificially constructed. Simplicio and Salviati, for example, are both mouthpieces for Galileo. We finally decided that we would both take turns going over all the material point by point. We have, of course, ventured into areas in which we are only dilettantes. We hope the reader will forgive us this in the light of our efforts to uncover parallels and so to emphasize the unity of nature and mind.

We do not want to go any further into the substance of the book here than is necessary to make clear why we chose the title we did. Similarly, the introductions to the individual chapters are meant to lead the reader into the material treated, not to summarize it.

Chance and law (or principles) are the basic elements of games. The subtitle of the book suggests the interaction between them. And here we should add that it is the consequences of chance that are subject to regulation. Only if there is a large number of individual events does the element of chance come under the control of statistical law. This law is at work, for instance, when chance fluctuations undergo self-regulation in equilibrium or when they are amplified in the evolutionary process. The origin of the genetic code, the development of languages by which we transmit our thoughts, the intellectual play of artistic imagination are all based on the same fundamental principles of evolution, even though the results of individual games are determined by the caprice and variability of chance.

The manifestations of the game that matter plays in time and space and the effects this game has on human beings are the themes of the central chapters in the book. Much as we may agree with Jacques Monod in his view of molecular biology, we differ from him greatly in the conclusions he draws from it for mankind and society. We see Monod’s demand for an “existential attitude toward life and society” as an animistic inflation of the role of “chance.” Such a demand neglects the complementary role played by natural law. Criticism of the dialectical overemphasis on “necessity”—a criticism we find fully justified—should not move us to deny completely its obvious infiuence.

We are in complete agreement with Monod’s statement that ethics and knowledge cannot be divorced from each other. For us, however, this view does not condemn the great religions but rather sets them a new task. As we have occasion to point out in the present work, the natural sciences yield no proof of God’s existence, but neither do they claim that men “can do without faith in God.”

The unity of nature is expressed more in the laws governing the relationships between structures than in the structures themselves. Taking this “motto” as a point of departure for Part IV, we examine a number of problems that have recently come more and more under the purview of the natural sciences and that are still far from being solved. In these considerations, we are mainly concerned with the mechanisms of cognizance. In terms of the elementary processes involved, these mechanisms always amount to a falsification in Karl Popper’s sense. Still, we cannot fully accept the views of this great epistemological logician, particularly when he claims: “There is no induction.” Good enough! But there are different mechanisms of falsification that vary in their degree of inductive adaptation.

One of our main concerns in this book lies at the heart of Part III. There we raise the still unsolved question of the hubris of human knowledge. Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s categorical imperative “What concerns all can only be worked out by all” is as relevant for the physicist whose knowledge can unleash the forces of nature as it is for the biologist who is now in a position to manipulate genetic material and influence psychic behavior with drugs. And our appeal here is also directed at the economist and the politician, who have the task of creating, maintaining, and protecting the conditions necessary for a worthwhile human existence.

Pessimistic predictions based on simple extrapolation are widespread today. We will not be able to solve the problem of limited resources by frugality alone. A raw material that will be used up in about fifty years at present rates of consumption might last a hundred years if we cut down on its use. (Such a reduction might, of course, threaten the stability of our economy.) In other words, the catastrophe could be delayed for another fifty years. Would it not be more sensible to concentrate on ensuring unlimited resources, perhaps by reusing our raw materials in a recycling economy and by developing sufficiently productive sources of energy? However we solve this problem, the practicability of our solution will depend on stopping population growth, perhaps even on reducing the world’s population.

We must be clear about one thing: The human being is not a fluke of nature, nor does nature automatically guarantee his survival. The human being is one player in a huge game, the outcome of which is, for him, uncertain. He has to make full use of his capabilities to hold his own as a player and not become a plaything of chance.

Manfred Eigen / Ruthild Winkler-Oswatitsch
Göttingen, September 1975

ONE

The Taming of Chance

Research in physics has shown beyond the shadow of a doubt that in the overwhelming majority of phenomena whose regularity and invariability have led to the formulation of the postulate of causality, the common element underlying the consistency observed is chance.

Erwin Schrödinger, “What Is a Natural Law?” (Inaugural Address delivered at the University of Zurich, December 1922)

1

The Origin of Play

Play is a natural phenomenon that has guided the course of the world from its beginnings. It is evident in the shaping of matter, in the organization of matter into living structures, and in the social behavior of human beings.

The history of play goes back to the beginnings of time. The energy released in the “big bang” set everything in motion, set matter whirling in a maelstrom of activity that would never cease. The forces of order sought to bring this process under control, to tame chance. The result was not the rigid order of a crystal but the order of life. From the outset, chance has been the essential counterpart of the ordering forces.

Chance and rules are the elements that underlie games and play. Play began among the elementary particles, atoms, and molecules, and now our brain cells carry it on. Human beings did not invent play, but it is “play and only play that makes man complete.”1

All our capabilities arise from play. First, there is the play of limbs and muscles. The aimless grasping and kicking of an infant develop into carefully coordinated movements. Then there is the play of our senses. Playful curiosity sends us in search of profound knowledge. From play with colors, shapes, and sounds emerge immortal works of art. The first expressions of love take the form of play: the secret exchange of glances, dancing, the interplay of thoughts and emotions, the yielding of partners to each other. In Sanskrit, the union of lovers is called kridaratnam, “the jewel of games.”2

Every game has its rules that set it apart from the surrounding world of reality and establish its own standards of value. Anyone who wants to “play” has to follow those rules. In parlor games, rules established before the game begins determine the course the game will take and define the scale of values by which it is played. But the effects of a chance occurrence can change the constellation of the game and set it running in a totally new direction. This is how life initiated its first games, and this is how our thoughts and ideas continue to play those games.

From the terrifying realm of elemental forces and the holy realm of laws arises the aesthetic impulse, which creates a third, carefree realm. This is the realm of play and appearance. In it, man is freed from the bonds of all circumstance and liberated from compulsion, moral as well as physical.1

It is our intention in this book to trace the interplay of chance and law that has come down to us from the farthest reaches of time and found its most perfect expression in the inexhaustible creativity of our ideas. We hope to translate Hermann Hesse’s symbol of the glass bead game back into reality. Hesse described this game as one that incorporated all the values of our culture.

All the insights, noble thoughts, and works of art that the human race has produced in its creative eras, all that subsequent periods of scholarly study have reduced to concepts and converted into intellectual property—on all this immense body of intellectual values the Glass Bead Game player plays like the organist on an organ. And this organ has attained an almost unimaginable perfection; its manuals and pedals range over the entire intellectual cosmos; its stops are almost beyond number. Theoretically this instrument is capable of reproducing in the Game the entire intellectual content of the universe.3

There is something mysterious about glass beads. The reflection and refraction of light make them glow, and as we explore the idea of play in this book, Hesse’s glass beads will take on a new life. Part of their symbolic significance derives from the fact that they can exemplify the constant transformations and metamorphoses we observe all around us: atoms evolve into crystals, molecules into genes, living cells into cognitive beings, letters into words, notes into harmonies. The course the bead game takes is determined by the roll of the dice, yet at the same time it is also influenced by the rules of the game, just as chance in nature is subject to the laws of physics. The dice and the rules of the game these are our symbols for chance and natural law.

List of References

  1. Schiller, Friedrich von, “Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (On the Aesthetic Education of Mankind),” in a series of letters from the years 1793-94, printed in his Philosophical and Critical Writings (many eds.).
  2. Huizinga, Johan, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955.
  3. Hesse, Hermann, The Glass Bead Game: Magister Ludi. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1969.
Manfred Eigen & Ruthild Winkler. Laws of the Game: How the Principles of Nature Govern Chance. Translated by Rita & Robert Kimber, Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. xi-5.

Theodor Adorno, a Marxist theoretician, believed the filter before any interpretation of the world was ever-present advertising and, by extension, capitalism. While Adorno thinks of capitalism as destiny, Yeats came to realize that “accident is destiny” (as we previously discussed). Amid these infinitely debatable opinions, the world is often a perplexity machine that may not be described by a single view.

Japan-Watching: Machinery Orders in August, 2026

[from Japan’s Cabinet Office (内閣府) Economic and Social Research]

Results

  1. The total value of machinery orders received by 280 manufacturers operating in Japan decreased by 3.7% in August from the previous month on a seasonally adjusted basis.
  2. Private-sector machinery orders, excluding volatile ones for ships and those from electric power companies, increased a seasonally adjusted by 5.2% in August.

Percentage change from previous quarter (month)

(%)

2025
Jul-Sep		Oct-Dec2026
Jan-Mar		Apr-JunJul-Sep
(forecast)		2026
May		JunJulAug
Total3.510.210.311.3-0.19.50.4-5.5-3.7
private sector-1.36.22.614.6-3.837.4-26.01.5-4.2
(exc. volatile orders)-1.06.66.40.24.9-12.49.7-3.75.2
manufacturing5.3-0.810.0-1.34.0-14.919.9-1.01.6
non-manufacturing (exc. volatile orders)-4.411.36.2-2.35.9-9.34.5-2.62.9
governments-14.757.7-21.3-17.828.5-5.010.5-9.2-6.1
from overseas14.53.631.010.41.3-4.419.9-8.2-7.7
through agencies0.32.64.86.711.1-5.87.21.3-6.3

Note

  1. Seasonally adjusted series. As all series are seasonally adjusted individually, a sum of seasonally adjusted individual/component series does not equal to seasonally adjusted totals.
  2. Volatile orders: Orders for ships and those from electric power companies.

References

Chart 1: Total Value of Machinery Orders

Chart 2: Private Sector (excluding volatile orders)

Table 1: Machinery Orders by Sectors

(billion Yen %)

2025
Jul-Sep		Oct-Dec2026
Jan-Mar		Apr-JunJul-Sep
(forecast)		2026
May		JunJulAug
Total9,543.6
(3.5)
[6.1]		10,514.8
(10.2)
[13.5]		11,593.0
(10.3)
[23.5]		12,900.0
(11.3)
[39.4]		12,881.0
(-0.1)
[36.7]		4,422.2
(9.5)
[40.4]		4,439.0
(0.4)
[43.7]		4,195.7
(-5.5)
[36.8]		4,041.9
(-3.7)
[26.1]
private sector3,370.6
(-1.3)
[12.9]		3,580.8
(6.2)
[11.2]		3,674.3
(2.6)
[11.6]		4,210.8
(14.6)
[22.4]		4,051.2
(-3.8)
[21.0]		1,706.2
(37.4)
[40.8]		1,262.6
(-26.0)
[12.7]		1,281.3
(1.5)
[10.3]		1,226.9
(-4.2)
[13.8]
(exc. volatile orders)2,741.4
(-1.0)
[6.6]		2,921.6
(6.6)
[8.1]		3,109.2
(6.4)
[12.6]		3,116.2
(0.2)
[10.8]		3,268.6
(4.9)
[19.9]		962.0
(-12.4)
[-1.9]		1,055.8
(9.7)
[16.9]		1,016.9
(-3.7)
[11.2]		1,069.8
(5.2)
[18.6]
manufacturing1,369.3
(5.3)
[14.0]		1,357.8
(-0.8)
[3.9]		1,493.7
(10.0)
[14.8]		1,474.8
(-1.3)
[12.5]		1,534.0
(4.0)
[12.6]		437.2
(-14.9)
[-4.7]		524.1
(19.9)
[27.4]		518.6
(-1.0)
[20.5]		527.0
(1.6)
[23.5]
non-manufacturing (exc. volatile orders)1,409.5
(-4.4)
[1.5]		1,568.1
(11.3)
[12.0]		1,666.0
(62)
[12.5]		1,627.2
(-2.3)
[9.6]		1,723.8
(5.9)
[25.6]		516.9
(-9.3)
[0.9]		540.2
(4.5)
[8.5]		525.9
(-2.6)
[5.7]		541.3
(2.9)
[10.8]
governments1,159.4
(-14.7)
[-22.7]		1,828.8
(57.7)
[-4.4]		1,439.2
(-21.3)
[-18.6]		1,183.4
(-17.8)
[-13.2]		1,521.2
(28.5)
[33.4]		374.7
(-5.0)
[-24.9]		414.2
(10.5)
[-7.3]		376.2
(-9.2)
[-25.8]		353.3
(-6.1)
[8.1]
from overseas4,624.3
(14.5)
[10.3]		4,789.4
(3.6)
[22.3]		6,275.3
(31.0)
[57.2]		6.928.8
(10.4)
[71.1]		7.016.5
(1.3)
[55.6]		2,135.5
(-4.4)
[62.2]		2,559.6
(19.9)
[83.8]		2,350.2
(-8.2)
[81.5]		2,168.7
(-7.7)
[36.9]
through agencies410.6
(0.3)
[9.1]		421.3
(2.6)
[13.1]		441.3
(4.8)
[18.7]		470.7
(6.7)
[13.7]		522.7
(11.1)
[24.7]		150.2
(-5.8)
[0.4]		161.0
(7.2)
[16.1]		163.1
(1.3)
[12.1]		152.8
(-6.3)
[17.4]

Notes

  1. Seasonally adjusted series. As all series are seasonally adjusted individually, a sum of seasonally adjusted individual/component series does not equal to seasonally adjusted totals.
  2. Figures in () represent the percentage change from the previous quarter (month). Figures in [] are the percentage change from the corresponding quarter (month) of the previous year in original series.
  3. Volatile orders: Orders for ships and those from electric power companies.

Table 2:

2025
Jul-Sep		Oct-Dec2026
Jan-Mar		Apr-Jun2026
May		JunJulAug
Manufacturing5.3-0.810.0-1.3-14.919.9-1.01.6
1. Foods and beverages-72-0.911.0-2.1-13.227.3-11.60.1
2. Textile mill products12.3-3.1-12.526.13.8-14.3-7.0-18.6
3. Pulp, paper and paper products5.09.4-7.9-2.514.35.465.2-33.2
4. Chemical and chemical products9.5-37.542.7-21.719.239.0-12.0-11.5
5. Petroleum and coal products-36.366.7-53.4-2.57.132.94.819.6
6. Ceramic, stone and clay products31.2-7.19.515.7-13.33.26.1-23.0
7. Iron and steel22.6-11.521.5-21.5-5.3-10.85.8-36.3
8. Non-ferrous metals-5.2-0.226.1-16.019.5225.3-82.2132.6
9. Fabricated metal products-6.9-5.716.448.313.8-46.113.2-10.7
10. General-purpose and production machinery7.1-4.111.0-0.8-10.318.9-1.49.3
11. Business-oriented machinery-11.52.48.219.9-14.33.2-7.2-5.7
12. Electrical machinery-6.310.3-3.020.2-12.02.246.1-5.9
13. Information and communication electronics22.3-8.611.915.1-23.629.74.713.0
14. Automobiles, parts and accessories3.8-0.813.6-0.57.46.91.513.1
15. Ship building18.8-25.765.73.9-80.594.988.9-41.0
16. Other transport equipment-4.55.936.4-11.467.14.7-41.443.7
17. Other manufacturing-1.59.9-4.2-4.6-10.2-0.6-1.36.1
Non-manufacturing-2.410.3-1.524.168.0-40.40.8-5.7
18. Agriculture, forestry and fishing10.412.20.5-23.2-24.233.011.0-4.0
19. Mining, quarrying of stone and gravel-8.4-6.93.0-24.120.723.76.725.0
20. Construction-3.18.34.09.31.6-8.55.8-17.2
21. Electricity supply1.0-1.50.291.7342.9-75.134.2-34.9
22. Transportation and postal activities7.00.1-15.85.5-23.38.93.3-13.9
23. Telecommunications-16.818.8-0.814.6-7.522.3-23.216.9
24. Wholesale and retail trade4.8-2.44.13.4-3.1-3.1-3.929.2
25. Finance and insurance-6.39.38.5-2.7-10.617.9-6.80.2
26. Real estate-20.94.714.139.7-69.3253.1-26.40.7
27. Information services-6.47.725.1-11.8-8.916.0-16.97.9
28. Goods leasing14.3-12.810.1-16.6-18.6-0.9-6.8136.0
29. Other non-manufacturing-2.541.5-2.8-5.234.9-26.620.1-28.0

Note

Percentage change from previous quarter (month) in seasonally adjusted series.

Japan-Watching: BoJ’s Koeda Points to a Longer Hiking Cycle

Her potential-growth example implies a neutral rate around 2.8%, above the Bank’s published 2.5% ceiling and well above today’s 1.25% policy rate.

[by OKUBO Takuji]

Key Takeaways

  • Koeda, probably the most influential swing vote on the board, seemed slightly more hawkish in her speech on October 15. She stopped just short of calling the 2% target achieved.
  • Her conceptual example of a neutral rate, potential growth plus 2%, points to a neutral rate well above 2%. While she is not in a hurry to push for hikes as the two hawks are, she seems open to a protracted hiking cycle.
  • I continue to think an October hike is out of the question. Koeda’s openness to a hike marginally raises the possibility of a December hike. I still consider it highly unlikely, though.

Why Koeda matters

On October 15, 2026, KOEDA Junko [小枝淳子] made her 3rd speech since she joined the BoJ policy board in 2025. She is an ex-IMF academic and yield curve specialist. She is probably the most important and influential swing vote in the current BoJ board. In her speech [archived PDF] and the following press conference (Japan Macro Advisors’ unofficial transcript), she sounded more open to continued rate increases than the three BoJ executives, although she was careful not to give any indication of the timing of the next move.

The board is balanced at both ends

As you can see in chart 1, the board is evenly balanced with two hawks at top-right and two doves at bottom-left (if you are unfamiliar with the BoJ-Policy Stance Indicator framework, please see the Japan Macro Advisors primer). That leaves KOEDA Junko [小枝 淳子] and MASU Kazuyuki [増 一行] between the two ends, sitting with the three BoJ executives: the Governor and two Deputy Governors. As BoJ executives tend to vote together, Koeda and Masu cast critical swing votes.

Chart 1

Koeda sounded more hawkish than before

In her speech [archived PDF] and the following press conference (see the Japan Macro Advisors unofficial transcript), she seemed slightly more hawkish than I anticipated. Koeda judges trend inflation to be already about 2% overall and increasingly well-anchored. She stopped just short of saying the 2% target has been achieved. She said:

“For about a year now I have described underlying inflation as roughly 2% on the whole, and I have kept checking how firmly it is taking hold. On the CPI, as I noted at Chart 11, broad-based price increases have continued for several years, and the distribution of year-on-year changes by item also suggests that this is becoming established. Wages, too, have shown stable increases overall. For these reasons, I think Japan’s inflation is becoming more persistently entrenched than before.” [Kumamoto speech, 15 October 2026, Japan Macro Advisors translation]

Koeda also offered a simplified concept of the neutral rate as the potential growth rate plus the 2% inflation target. As the Bank’s latest potential-growth estimate is about 0.8%, this could put the nominal neutral rate at 2.8%, exceeding the top of the Bank’s published nominal range of 1.1–2.5%. She did offer another version that put the neutral rate at a lower level, but it was clear that she wanted to give a higher version of a potential neutral rate.

To be clear, she did not endorse 2.8% as a policy-rate destination. At the press conference, she said the potential-growth rule does not always hold and declined to give a point estimate. But her intention was most likely to nudge the neutral rate range higher.

Koeda was clear in her message that she is open to a rate hike. She said: “I do not think we need to be overly cautious about raising rates.” [speech, Japan Macro Advisors translation]

But she was quite evasive regarding the timing of the next hike. In the press conference, reporters repeatedly asked for her view on a back-to-back rate hike, a veiled way of asking whether an October hike is possible. She was quite firm in repeating her stance that she does not have any particular pace in mind. This was an interesting contrast with Governor Ueda’s dismissive comment on the possibility of a successive or oversized rate hike (see the Japan Macro Advisors September 18 report). That does not mean she endorsed consecutive hikes. It means she left the option more open than Ueda did.

Conclusion: More open to multiple hikes

By choosing potential growth plus 2% as an example of the neutral rate, Koeda seems to be creating more space for the policy rate to eventually rise above 2%, in my view. In terms of the timing for the next hike, she was non-committal. I would still consider an October hike out of the question, but her non-committal attitude does marginally raise the possibility of a December hike, although I still consider it highly unlikely.