The EconomistSeptember 5th 2020 Books & arts 732
1cal success delivers paltry financial re-
wards, which mostly go to pay technicians.
But the artists earn in other ways: higher
status on the street, the attention of wom-
en, respect from other would-be rappers
and adoration from some online fans.
Who then is responsible for the vio-
lence? Not one actor alone. But one conclu-
sion is that consumers of drill—mostly
more affluent folk far from the South
Side—encourage it through the digital
economy. They reward (by sharing and
clicking) videos of artists who are the most
authentically antagonistic and boastful
about their violent crimes. “I want to impli-
cate all of us,” says Mr Stuart. “Too often we
leave ourselves, as consumers, out of the
equation.” Rappers respond to consumer
demand. If their content “is not egregious-
ly violent, then they are irrelevant”. 7A
nts andpeoplehavemuchincom-
mon, Edward Wilson explains. Both
are social animals, organised into complex
societies with elaborate forms of commu-
nication. Ant societies, much like the hu-
man kind, are often highly stratified, with
specialised jobs and a well-defined caste
system. Some ants are warriors, some slav-
ers, and some, more benignly, gardeners.
But Mr Wilson cautions against carry-
ing the analogy too far. Though ants are
creatures of instinct, “human beings are
torn by the competing needs of self, family
and tribe. We use culture to banish instinct
or at least tame it.” There is nothing in the
ruthless lives of ants “that we can or should
emulate for our own moral betterment”.
Mr Wilson has built a distinguished ca-
reer by deploying insights from the biology
and behaviour of ants to present larger les-
sons about evolution, ecology and the ex-
tent to which human psychology can be ex-
plained by natural selection. As its title
suggests, “Tales from the Ant World” is a
short, loose-jointed and conversational
book. It lacks the ambition of works such as
Mr Wilson’s “Sociobiology: The New Syn-
thesis” (published in 1975) or the panoram-
ic sweep of “The Diversity of Life” (1992),
but it is filled with delightful accounts of a
naturalist in action and enough hard sci-
ence to keep readers on their toes.
Ants and humans not only share a so-
ciable nature; they have shaped each oth-er’sdestiniesthroughouttheirsharedtime
onEarth, sometimes as competitors, at
othertimescompanionably.Forinstance,
antshaveexploitedthehumantalentfor
long-distancetravelto extendtheirown
reach.Ontheirown,antsare“pooroceanic
travellers”, but they hitched rides with
marinersacrossthePolynesianarchipela-
goduringtheageofEuropeanexploration,
androamedbeyondtheirnaturalhabitats
aboardmoderncommercialvessels.Often
thearrivalofthesealiensdisturbstheeco-
logical balance.When acrop-destroying
fireantnativetoArgentinaandUruguay
arrivedintheportofMobile,Alabama,on
cargo boats, it soon spread devastation
acrosstheAmericanSouthandbeyond.
InMrWilson’shandsevenant-sizedan-
ecdotescarrytheseedsoflargerideas.He
celebratesingenuityevenwhenitismani-
festedonthesmallestscales.Asmaybeex-
pectedfromsomeonewhohasspentmuch
ofhiscareercrawlingonhandsandknees
amongtherottingleavesofa forestfloor,or
chasinginsectsacrossdesertsands,theau-
thorisnotsqueamish.Hefindsbeautyin
thecleverwaysa parasiticfungusdrivesits
hostinsecttoitsdeath,orintheresource-
fulnessoftheMatabeleants,whichattack
and destroytermite moundsthesize of
buses.“Everycorpseisanecosystem,”he
phlegmaticallyobserves.
Revoltingasallthismayseem,MrWil-
sonsoonbringsthereaderaround.“Each
fallenbird,landedfish,beachedwhale,de-
composinglog,pluckedflower”,hewrites,
“isdestinedtochangefroma conglomerate
ofgiantmolecules,themostcomplexsys-
temintheuniverseknown,intoclouds
anddriftsofmuchsmallerorganicmole-
cules.”Zoomingoutfromthemicroscopic
tothepanoramicandbackagain,“Tales
fromtheAntWorld”findswonderinna-
ture’sendlessvariety. 7MyrmecologyA bug’s life
Tales from the Ant World.By Edward
Wilson. Liveright; 240 pages; $26.95
and £17.99Anty matterA
beshinzowasjustfiveyearsoldin
1960 when protesters surrounded his
grandfather’s house in Tokyo. Kishi Nobu-
suke, then Japan’s prime minister, was in
the midst of a pitched battle over Japan’s
security treaty with America. Kishi would
get his treaty that year, though it led to him
losing power. For a young Mr Abe, the epi-
sode would be “the touchstone of his polit-
ical identity”, argues Tobias Harris in “The
Iconoclast”, a new biography of Japan’s lon-
gest-serving prime minister.
Mr Abe’s status as the grandson of a for-
mer prime minister and the son of a former
foreign minister, Abe Shintaro, is well-
known. Mr Harris, a longtime observer of
Japanese politics, astutely explains how Mr
Abe’s family influenced his thinking, and
situates that thinking in the broader con-
text of Japanese history stretching back to
the Meiji restoration of 1868. This compre-
hensive and engaging tome may become
the definitive English-language portrait of
Mr Abe, made all the more relevant by his
recent resignation (see Asia section).
As Mr Harris shows, Mr Abe is the pro-
geny of Kishi, but a product of the Ameri-
can occupation and the many strange com-
promises it engendered. His grandfather’s
fate is one of the most striking. Kishi made
his name orchestrating forced labour for
the Japanese war machine as a minister in
Japanese-occupied Manchuria in the 1930s.
He served loyally in Japan’s wartime cabi-
net and was arrested as a war criminal in- As the cold war ramped up, Kishi was
one of several ex-leaders the Americans let
off in order to help rebuild Japan as a bul-
wark against Soviet communism. Kishi
climbed to the pinnacle of power in Japan
by helping to found the Liberal Democratic
Party (ldp) with a bit of help from the cia.
Re-establishing Japan’s sovereignty and
seeking greater equality in the partnership
with America became Kishi’s mission. But
in the battle of post-war ideas, his vision
lost out to the “Yoshida Doctrine” (so
named after Japan’s first significant post-
war prime minister, Yoshida Shigeru),
wherein Japan would rely upon America
for security while focusing on its own eco-
nomic development. Mr Abe made it his
cause to revise that consensus, embodied
in the American-imposed post-war consti-
tution that bars Japan from having armed
forces (though it does, with American sup-
port, maintain mighty armed forces for the
Abe ShinzoFamily man
The Iconoclast.By Tobias Harris. Hurst;
392 pages; $29.95 and £25