Hikikomori

Hikikomori (pronounced hic-hee-kee-koh-moh-ree)

(1) A mode of behaviour in which an individual becomes a recluse from society, typically remaining isolated, sometimes for decades, in a single room at home.

(2) An individual exhibiting this behaviour for a sustained period.

1990s: From the Japanese noun 引きこもり or 引き籠もり (hikikomori), (literally “pulling inward; being confined”), from the verb hikikomoru (引きこもる).  The construct was 引く (hiku) (to pull, to draw back, to withdraw) + 籠る or こもる (komoru) (to shut oneself away; to remain secluded; to stay inside).  So, the literal translation is something like “to withdraw and remain shut in” but, used to mean “one who has withdrawn into seclusion”, the more common verbal shorthand is “shut in” (in the sense of “acute social withdrawal” or something in that vein).  Although once regarded as a uniquely Japanese phenomenon, it’s not now thought culturally specific, that perception a product of the condition and its extent first being widely documented in Japanese publications.  In Japan, the usual clipping is hikki.  Hikikomori is a noun; the noun plural is plural hikikomori or hikikomoris.

The element komoru is not recent; historically it referred not only to people but also generally to the concept of “being shut away or enclosed” or natural features such as a mountain at times when it was encircled by clouds or a land mass visible only at low tide (a tidal island or tombolo (a sand bar or path of dirt that connects this land to the coastline when the tide falls)).  More typically however it was use of individuals opting for whatever reason to “remain indoors” (such as those who, for religious reasons, might retreat to a mountain hermitage, either for a period of contemplation (that might last a lifetime) or to escape a society they had come to view as in some way “unsatisfactory”.  The concept of hikikomori is different in that those “afflicted” are not deemed to be motivated by a religious calling or philosophical position but instead “suffering” a visceral reaction to the condition of society or their life, manifesting as an urge to retreat from the outside world to a “safe” enclosed space.  This aligns with the modern use in psychiatry.

Hikikomori in a hoodie by @do-triph.

So use of the verb hikikomoru goes back generations but the noun hikikomori came into use only in the 1990s when the psychiatric sense was popularized in the book Shakaiteki Hikikomori: Owaranai Shishunki (Social Withdrawal: Adolescence Without End, 1998) by Japanese psychiatrist Dr Tamaki Saitō san (b 1961).  For reasons both structural and historic, it’s rare for concepts in psychiatry to have origins in Japan so hikikomori enjoys an unusual place in modern nosology (the characteristics or scientific understanding of a specific disease).  Internationally however, hikikomori “caught on” and became part of the standard jargon; that was not because there was any particular interest in categorizing uniquely Japanese phenomena but because clinicians in other places had for some time been aware the behaviour was not uncommon in their countries.  The Western media soon took an interest in hikikomoru because editors knew stories about “disaffected adolescents locking themselves in their bedrooms for years” would be good productive clickbait, readers likely to be attracted by tales of troubled geniuses or depressed emos.

The companion terms are the English language acronym NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) and the Japanese オタク (Otaku).  Otaku (best translated as “geek” or “nerd”, reflecting the bias in use towards computers or other tech) emerged from fandom community associated with Macross (a Japanese science fiction mecha anime media franchise), the use derived from お宅 (otaku) (you), from the honorific form 宅 (taku) (home), thus the notion of Macross being “your home” (ie one’s natural environment”).  From the Macross obsessives, use extended to “obsessive interest in something” (especially (and often exclusively) Japanese anime or manga).  While originally a derogatory term, fandom communities “reclaimed” otaku as a self-descriptor although it does continue to be applied disparagingly.  In the West, it tends to be neutral, used to refer to anyone with a strong interest (obsessive or not) in anime or manga.  NEET is applied not to all those “unemployed” but only those thought apathetic or who exhibit the characteristics of a hikikomori but in sub-groups, the play on words with the English “neat” (in the sense “excellent, desirable; interesting; cool”) prevails.

Mental Health Daily's choice of an image capturing the hikikomori experience.

The hikikomori came to be known as “the lost generation” and that it was a thing identified in the 1990s and celebrated (in a sense, that can be the right word) in Dr Saitō san’s 1998 book is interesting because it was the 1990s that came to be known as “the lost decade”).  Although there were of course the inevitable fluctuations in the growth curve, over the 40 years between 1949-1989, the trend for the Japanese economy in most indicative measures (GDP (gross domestic product), GNP (gross national product), RPP (relative purchasing power), AMWE (average male weekly earning), corporate profits, exports, trade surplus etc) tended upwards and while, given the country’s paucity of natural resources, that was an achievement in some ways even more remarkable than the Wirtschaftswunder (“economic miracle”) witnessed in the FRG (Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany, 1949-1990) over the same period, the stellar performance was not without consequences and some of those consequences triggered reactions.  The strength of Japanese economy was by the 1980s producing notable distortions in the world’s production and trading systems and that of course affected currencies, as aspect of the international system distorted still further by this happening at a time when currencies weren’t allowed to “float” to the extent now familiar, governments and central banks (in some places, for this purpose, the distinction between the two institutions not significant) sometimes literally “setting the rate” by fiat.  All this required trips to Tokyo by the US Treasury Secretary to negotiate the devaluation of the US dollar and it was in the 1970s & 1980s the deindustrialization of the US economy really began, later forces such as automation, computing, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) proving most adept at capitalism and AI (artificial intelligence) being building blocks in what continues to evolve as the “new model”.  US politicians of course responded to this by inducing Japan, the FRG and others running substantial trade surpluses with the US to shift some production to the US and that to some extent reduced the imbalances but, factories and assembly lines in the 1980s not being what they were a generation earlier, US employment levels or incomes certainly weren't restored.

The Japanese economy continued to flourish and the fear in the US was often expressed as “Japan taking over the world”.  That this might be done by the use of Japanese money was a thought bad enough but to add insult to injury, much of the money was in US dollars gained by Americans paying Japanese companies for the sort of stuff once manufactured in their now shuttered factories.  Against that threat, the world’s most potent military (a chunk of which was allocated to the defense of Japan) and an impressive arsenal of thermo-nuclear weapons able to be delivered anywhere on the planet was not a great deal of help.  What was a help was economic reality because by 1989 one part of the Japanese economy had developed into a disproportionately large bubble; at this bubble’s peak, the notional value of Tokyo real estate market was greater than the entire continental US.  Although obviously not something that could have been realized in the “real world” (ie had every piece of real estate in Tokyo been offered for sale at its nominal valuation), the numbers were indicative of one of economic history’s most notable imbalances.  In a kind of national hubris (an exuberance as “irrational” as anything seen since the Dutch “tulip bubble”), the combination of extreme over-confidence by speculators and ultra-loose credit policies by lenders had resulted in land values in Japanese cities (Tokyo the most extreme example) coming to be decoupled from economic reality (and, because of the “extrapolation effect” by which especially the value of commercial floor-space was calculated within markets), ultimately, basic mathematical reality too.

Hikikomore by 1gorman on Deviant Art.

An (extreme) example of a similar disconnection from reality would be Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) applying the metrics and methods of valuation (that for decades have served him well) to news cosmologists had used their new “big telescopes” to discover a “perfect Earth-like” planet (one of the so-called exoplanets (any planet located outside of our solar system)) a “mere” hundred light-years distant.  Obviously, this planet (or at least what it was a century ago). with an ideal climate, ample resources, stable geology etc, would contain much desirable real estate so the valuations attached to this unspoiled paradise would’ in other circumstances, be high.  There might be some uncertainly if it couldn’t be determined if the place had inhabitants (on Earth such folk have proved troublesome in land-grabs) but that’s just something speculators have to “factor in”.  The problem however is that however desirable might be the exoplanet’s lands and seas, they’re a “stranded asset” because of the distance from Earth; we cannot contemplate travelling a single light-year, let alone a hundred.

Safely tucked up: Lindsay Lohan in Hikikomori mode.

So distance can be an intrusive reality, “stranding an asset”.  That’s what the math in 1989 did to Japanese real estate values, the extrapolated numbers meaning floor space in office buildings became at once “the most expensive on the planet” and unrealizable as convertible into cash; the asset became stranded in its bubble.  Still, the frothy days of 1989 must trigger a warm glow of nostalgia among the few able to take their profits and “exit” before the crash of 1990.  When the “bubble burst”, the effects were profound because, unlike the Dutch “tulip bubble” now understood to have had relatively little long-term effect on the wider economy of the Netherlands, in Japan, the crash in the real estate market trigged a cascade of consequences affecting the stock market, over-exposed banks and the wider economy.  In retrospect, that it was a bubble seems so obvious but then, in retrospect, much often does: In 1989, the cumulative value of the Japanese property market was four times that of the US (the latter with more than twice the population and 25 times the land mass); metropolitan Tokyo alone was worth more than the entire continental US and the 1.15 km² grounds of the Imperial Palace were valued at up to US$5.1 trillion (greater than the entire state of California).  So assets can become “stranded” in a number of ways but the concept is much the same: Whatever may appear the “book value”, if this number can never be translated to “real” economic value (not necessarily cash), that asset is stranded.  The Gaza strip is less distant from New York’s Trump Tower than the desirable real estate on an exoplanet a hundred light away but, with a population tiresomely showing no wish to go somewhere else so sea-front resorts can be built, it may as well be as distant.

Four episodes of Welcome to the N.H.K. (note the “Parental Warning” advisor stickers).

Among the most intriguing of the anime projects was Welcome to the N.H.K., based on a series of novellas by Tatsuhiko Takimoto san (b 1978).  Featuring a very anime-friendly cast of characters (with all that implies), as might be expected in a work about hikikomori, the text explored issues such as social isolation, depression, anxiety and existential dread but the novelty was the appearance of the mysterious N.H.K. (Nihon Hikikomori Kyoukai (Japan Hikikomori Association), a Masonic-like institution responsible for the increasing number of recluses “shut up” in their bedrooms.  The hook is the tale is that the N.H.K. is the shadowy creation of NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (Japan Broadcasting Corporation)), the national public broadcaster.

What came to be called “Japan's Lost Decade” of the 1990s was marked severe economic stagnation, a “banking crisis” (bad loans left sitting on the books as if there was a prospect of repayment), a stock market collapse and deflation.  Between 1989-1991 the Nikkei 225 prime index would slump from near 39,000 to around 6,600 and in an era when many governments were fretting about apparently “entrenched” inflation, in Tokyo, what was being observed was deflation.  Central bankers at least know how to “fix” inflation (they engineer a recession), but deflation is a fabulous beast that convinces people not to spend because they know the same commodity will next week likely be cheaper; like the inverse process in an inflation-ridden state, deflation “feeds on itself” in a spiralling “feedback loop”.  Solutions proved elusive.  While central banks fighting inflation could continue raising interest rates until the pain of spending became too much for consumers, the concept of “negative interest rates” (ie one has to pay the bank to store one’s money) was of limited utility because savers’ “work arounds” to evade this would likely make the situation worse before it induced them to open the purse-strings.  Pulling the textbook off the shelf, after blowing off the dust, Japanese governments embarked on “fiscal stimulus programmes” that (with borrowed money) sustained banks continuing to loan to anyway insolvent borrowers, this creating both “zombie banks and “zombie companies”; institutions “not alive yet not quite dead”.  If anything is likely to stifle efficient resource reallocation in an economy, it’s having “zombies at scale”.  In a quirk of the uniqueness of the Japanese economy however, although government debt is now somewhere between 210-240% of GDP (the methods of calculation can vary) this is said “not to be a problem” because so much of the debt is in Yen and locally held (a benefit of all that saving induced by living in deflationary times).  Like the US government debt of US$40 trillion odd (120-135% of GDP), it may take some time before it’s confirmed whether or not these numbers are “a problem”.

Why I Became a Hikikomori (Shut-In), SillyPau explains.  Now we know.

All this happened in conjunction with GDP consistently under 1% and an aging population (a demographic trend that had become structural and continues to this day) and while those “salary men” in employment tended to remain so (although suffering “career stagnation”), the young, despite graduates being the most educated in history, faced what was dubbed the shūshoku hyōgaki (employment ice age), the jobs available for most being low paid, unstable and often non-permanent.  For a generation brought up with high expectations and a sense of unlimited possibilities, it was an unpleasant welcome to the new decade that would come to be called “the lost decade” and even that proved optimistic; by early in the twenty-first century the use had been updated to “lost decades” as the sluggishness persisted.  While it had come to be understood things were not going back to what they were in the happy days of 1989 (because what then was “was not real”), the young in particular still longed for something better.

Some continued their longing and some “just gave up”.  It was in the 1990s the “lost decade” produced the “lost generation” that came to be called the hikikomori, withdrawing from a society that seemed to offer little other than a dreary, meaningless existence.  By becoming recluses hardly ever leaving their bedrooms, maybe that was just another form of meaningless dreariness but at least it was on their terms and lent life some sense of “control”, illusory though that may have been.  According to Japanese researchers, the number of hikikomori had by 2024 grown to over a million and the phenomenon has, on a smaller scale, been noticed in other countries.  In Japan, having a million-odd modern-day hermits sitting in their bedrooms refusing to face the outside world remains unlikely to do much to stimulate the economy or the rapidly declining birth-rate.  Indeed, in mid-2026, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications disclosed the population of domestic citizens had for the first time fallen below 120 million, a 0.76% decrease from the previous year; with 670,467 births against 1,593,475 deaths, deaths are outpacing births by more than two to one.

If something is happening in Japan, there will be anime documenting it in every aspect.  Titles include ReLIFE (2016), Recovery of an MMO Junkie (2017) and the ominous sounding Forbidden Deductions (2023).

Some have argued there is an element of technological determinism is all this.  Whether or not one chooses to label it “internet addiction”, there’s no doubt the ecosystem of the web and apps (especially hyper-realistic gaming) had made it possible as never before to lead a kind of fulfilling life without ever leaving one's bedroom.  With accommodating parents (an ample supply found in Japan) and a good internet connection, the bedroom can become one’s universe, a place without the awfulness one know lies beyond one’s four walls.  There is nothing new about those who either cannot cope with or have no wish to deal with the demands of modern society retreating to the margins but, for the first time in history, it has become possible for these recluses to exist in a rich, diverse, entertaining world that is wholly virtualized; relationships and even love affairs able to be conducted with AI (artificial intelligence) bots.  Because of the dynamics of the ways these bots can be constructed, many users (and by, implication, many hikikomori) probably find these relationships more satisfactory than anything experienced with one with a creature of flesh and blood; in many ways, for the tech industry, the COVID-19 pandemic was a “perfect storm”, contributing to some finding social isolation as “normalized”. The Japanese Government acknowledges hikikomori exists and defines it as something affecting people who have stayed at home for at least six months.

Hikikomori is discussed in the APA’s (American Psychiatric Association) DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) but not as a distinct mental disorder. Instead, it’s listed as a behavioral or psychosocial phenomenon that may occur in association with a variety of psychiatric conditions (and even, in some cases, without any diagnosable mental disorder).  In other words, the DSM treats hikikomori as a symptom rather than a pathology.  That would make sense to clinicians (if not all behavioural sociologists) and in DSM-5-TR (2022), hikikomori is mentioned in the section dealing with “Cultural Concepts of Distress”, the characteristics including (1) marked social withdrawal, (2) remaining at home (often confined to one room) for at least six months and (3) an association with significant functional impairment.  So, in the DSM, hikikomori is not classified as a separate diagnosis and clinicians are encouraged to consider whether the withdrawal is better explained by disorders such as: (1) autism spectrum disorder, (2) major depressive disorder, (3) schizophrenia spectrum disorders, (4) social anxiety disorder, (5) avoidant personality disorder or (6) OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder).  If a patient seems not a good fit for any of those, helpfully, the DSM includes (7) other psychiatric illnesses and presumably, that cohort will be thought diagnostically the most interesting.  It would not be surprising if the profession settles on an acceptance of hikikomori as something transdiagnostic, a behavioral endpoint that can arise from various causes.

The Hikikomori: The Girl Who Couldn't Go Outside (2022) by Mark Vrankovich.

There is much thematic variation in hikikomori literature, ranging from the hopeful to the nihilistic.  There are also redemption tales.  In The Hikikomori: The Girl Who Couldn't Go Outside, Miko Nishimura san is a hikikomori who has become convinced she is the most insignificant person in Japan.  Crippled by anxiety, she never leaves her bedroom, occupying just about every waking moment playing racing games (she’s a most modern girl) on her computer.  However, a crisis ensues when the batteries in her wireless mouse die during a time when her parents are absent.  It’s made clear not many things could induce Miko san to leave the house but not being able to continue her gaming was such a rare  circumstance.  Miko san should of course have had spare batteries to hand (or, better still, used a wired mouse needing no batteries) but what’s done is done and can’t be undone and she knew she was compelled to make the terrifying trip to the shop to buy new batteries. As courageously she ventures forth, what unfolds is a tale intertwining contemporary Japanese culture, ancient magic powers and the finding of love.

Although in the west there’s a long tradition of “the recluse” (from the briefly installed Celestine V (circa 1212-1296; pope Jul-Dec 1294) to the film star Greta Garbo (1905–1990) and the multi-faceted Howard Hughes (1905–1976)) when in 1998 Dr Saitō san published his book, it seemed in the West fashionable to see hikikomori as something culturally specific, an example of one of the tradition-bound syndromes that delight writers who regard “Japanese weirdness” as the last acceptable form of the “orientalism” that was for decades a standard paradigm of academic and popular analysis of stuff east of Suez.  It’s still claimed (though increasingly unconvincingly) there are many of these “Japanese” syndromes relating to fields such as education, employment the family and attitude to psychiatric treatment but the modern view is that in these matters, between Japan and other cultures (certainly in East Asia), there are as many similarities as differences.  It has also become clear hikikomori–like behaviour exists in clinically significant numbers in a number of countries including South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Spain, Italy, France, New Zealand, Canada, the US, Australia, the UK, Brazil and India.  Despite that, it is still most associated with Japan because it was there first identified (a la the “Spanish flu” process of 1919) but there’s no doubt the conjunction of the nation’s “lost decades” and the subsequent overlays of (1) the internet, (2) social media, (3) the COVID-19 pandemic and (4) consumer-packaged AI algorithms that made possible “life-like virtual relationships” created economic and social conditions that made the phenomenon both more prevalent and visible.

Bubble

Bubble (pronounced buhb-uhl)

(1) A spherical globule of gas (or vacuum) contained in a liquid or solid.

(2) Anything that lacks firmness, substance, or permanence; an illusion or delusion.

(3) An inflated speculation, especially if fraudulent.

(4) The act or sound of bubbling.

(5) A spherical or nearly spherical canopy or shelter; dome.

(6) To form, produce, or release bubbles; effervesce.

(7) To flow or spout with a gurgling noise; gurgle.

(8) To speak, move, issue forth, or exist in a lively, sparkling manner; exude cheer.

(9) To seethe or stir, as with excitement; to boil.

(10) To cheat; deceive; swindle (archaic).

(11) To cry (archaic Scots).

(12) A type of skirt.

(13) In infection control management, a system of physical isolation in which un-infected sub-sets population are protected by restricting their exposure to others.

1350-1400: From the Middle English noun bobel which may have been from the Middle Dutch bubbel & bobbel and/or the Low German bubbel (bubble) and Middle Low German verb bubbele, all thought to be of echoic origin.  The related forms include the Swedish bubbla (bubble), the Danish boble (bubble) and the Dutch bobble.  The use to describe markets, inflated in value by speculation widely beyond any relationship to their intrinsic value, dates from the South Sea Bubble (a classic example of stock-price speculation) which began circa 1711 and collapsed in 1720.  In response to the collapse, the UK parliament passed The Bubble Act (1720), which required anyone seeking to float a joint-stock company to first secure a royal charter; interestingly, the act was supported by the South Sea Company before its failure.  Ever since cryptocurrencies emerged, analysts have been describing them as a bubble which will burst and while that has happened with hundreds of coins (the exchange collapses are something different), the industry thus far has continued with only with occasional periods of inflation and deflation; this makes cryptocurrencies highly volatile meaning there is much scope for profit and much risk of loss, the extent to which they're subject to insider trading an manipulation has been debated but only as a matter of degree.  Bubble & bubbling are nouns & verbs, bubbler is a noun, bubbled is a verb, bubbly is a noun & adjective, bubbleless & bubblelike are adjectives and bubblingly is an adverb; the noun plural is bubbles.

Tulips.  The collective noun police in the seventeenth century missed an opportunity in not declaring that henceforth the standard use would be: "a bubble of tulips".

However, although the South Sea affair was the first use of “bubble” to describe such a market condition, it wasn’t the first instance of a bubble, the most infamous of which was the Dutch tulpenmanie (tulip mania) which bounced during the 1630s, contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and wildly fashionable flower reaching extraordinarily high levels, the values accelerating from 1634 until a sudden collapse in 1637.  Apparently just a thing explained by a classic supply and demand curve, the tulip bubble burst with the first big harvest which demonstrated the bulbs and flowers were really quite common and easy to grow.  In history, there would previously have been many bubbles but it wasn’t until the economies and financial systems of early-modern Europe were operating that the technical conditions existed for them to manifest in the form and to the extent we now understand.  Interestingly, for something often regarded as the proto-speculative asset bubble and a landmark in economic history, twentieth-century revisionist historians have suggested it was more a behavioral phenomenon than anything with any great influence on the operation of financial markets or the real economy, the “economic golden age” of the Dutch Republic apparently continuing (mostly) unaffected for almost a century after the bottom fell out of the tulip market.  The figurative uses have been created or emerged as required, the first reference pre-dating the tulip affair, the usual motion being andything lacking a desired firmness, substance, or permanence; the first recorded used was in the 1590s but it was likely long established in oral use.  The soap-bubble dates from 1800, bubble-shell is from 1847, bubble-gum was introduced in 1935 and bubble-bath appears first to have be sold in 1937.  The slang noun variation “bubbly” was first noted in 1920, an invention of US English to describe a happy, talkative young lady.

Replica of Supermarine Spitfire Mark XVI TE288, Harewood Airport, Christchurch, New Zealand.

The term "bubble top" (also briefly as "bubble-top") came into use in the 1940s after advances in materials and manufacturing techniques allowed the cockpit canopies of aircraft to be made using large Perspex moldings.  The concept had been around for decades but it was the combination of modern plastics and the demands of wartime which made possible the mass-production of large moldings.  The designers called them "bubble canopies" but pilots preferred the snappier "bubbletop".  Spitfire TE288 was built in May 1945 at Vickers Armstrong's Castle Bromwich factory but, with the end of hostilities in Europe it was only briefly in service, mostly in a training role.  Gifted in 1964 to the Canterbury branch of the Brevet Club, it was mounted on a plinth as a memorial outside the club's building but by 1984 had become so valuable it was moved to the RNZAF (Royal New Zealand Air Force) museum at Wigram.  During restoration, molds were taken and a fibreglass replica was constructed to be placed on the plinth.  Optimized for the low-altitude performance needed to counter the threat of the German V1 “Doodlebugs” (an early cruise missile), the Spitfire Mk XVI was a variant of the Mark IX and powered by the Packard-built Rolls-Royce Merlin 266 engine rated 1,720 HP (horsepower).  Entering production in October 1944, 1,054 were built and as well as serving as interceptors, they were used in the ground attack role, notably against the sites from which the V2 missiles (an early ballistic missile and the first major step on the path to ICBMs (inter-continental ballistic missile) and the big rockets used by the US in the Apollo programme) were launched.  The bubble canopy afforded outstanding visibility while the clipped wingtips improved responsiveness (notably the superior roll-rate) while sacrificing some performance above 15,000 feet (4,500 metres) but by then the demands of aerial combat had shifted lower in the sky.

1961 Pontiac Ventura Sports Coupe (Bubble Top).

The term (as bubble top) later was applied to cars with rooflines in a shape which recalled the use in aviation although the structures were of conventional metal & glass.  The classic examples were the full-sized two-door hardtops produced by GM's (General Motors) Chevrolet and Pontiac divisions in 1960-1962, the 1961 models the most collectable.  The 1961 Pontiac Ventura Sports Coupe (a sub-model of the Catalina) pictured is fitted with Pontiac's much admired 8-Lug wheels, their exposed centres actually the brake drum to which the rim (in the true sense of the word) directly was bolted.  Introduced for 1960, the design was a fortuitous conjunction of fashion & function because as well as looking good, the heat dissipation qualities were outstanding, addressing one of the problems which plagued drum brakes.  Unfortunately, the design was not compatible with (outboard) disc brakes and as their fitment increased, sales of the option (circa US$125) fell and in 1968 production of the 8-Lug ceased.  

The word "bubble" spiked shortly after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Over time, use has expanded to encompass large-scale operations like touring sporting teams and even the geographical spaces used for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics but the original meaning was more modest: small groups based on close friends, an extended family or co-workers.  These small bubbles weren't supposed to be too elastic and operated in conjunction with other limits imposed in various jurisdictions; a bubble might consist of a dozen people but a local authority might limit gatherings to ten in the one physical space so two could miss out, depending on the details in the local rules.  The way most governments handled the pandemic was a bit muddled but in such events, as in most wars, much is a muddle.  Bubble thus began as an an unofficial term used to describe the cluster of people beyond one's household with whom one felt comfortable in an age of what was believed a highly infectious virus.  Bubbles were however a means of risk-reduction, not a form of quarantine.  In a bubble, risk still exist, most obviously because some may belong to more than one bubble, contact thus having a multiplier effect, the greater the number of interactions, the greater the odds of infection so staying home and limiting physical contact with others remained preferable, the next best thing to an imposed quarantine.  The more rigorously administered bubbles used for events like the Olympics are essentially exercises in perimeter control, a defined "clean" area, entry into which is restricted to those tested and found uninfected.  At the scale of something like an Olympic games, it's a massive undertaking to secure the edges but, given sufficient resource allocation can be done although it's probably misleading to speak of such an operation as as a "bubble".  Done with the static-spaces of Olympic venues, they're really quarantine-zones.  Bubble more correctly describes touring sporting teams which move as isolated bubbles often through unregulated space.

The Bubble Skirt

A type of short skirt with a balloon style silhouette, the bubble dress (more accurately described as a bubble skirt because that’s the bit to which the description applies) is characterized by a voluminous skirt with the hem folded back on itself to create a “bubble” effect at the hemline.  Within the industry, it was initially called a tulip skirt, apparently because of an at least vague resemblance to the flower but the public preferred bubble.  It shouldn’t be confused with the modern tulip skirt and the tulip-bubble thing is just a linguistic coincidence; there’s no link with the Dutch tulipmania of the 1630s.  Stylistically, the bubble design is a borrowing from the nineteenth century bouffant gown which featured a silhouette made of a wide, full skirt resembling a hoop skirt, sometimes with a hoop or petticoat beneath to provide structural support.  While bouffant gowns could be tea (mid-calf) or floor length, bubble skirts tend to truncate the look well above the knee; while calf-length creations are seen in collects, they're rare on the high street.  Perhaps with a little more geometric accuracy, the design is known also as the “puffball” and, in an allusion to oriental imagery, the “harem” skirt.  Fashion designer Christian Lacroix (b 1951) became fond of the look and a variation included in his debut collection was dubbed le pouf but, in English, the idea of the “poof skirt” never caught on although it was used by furniture makers.

Lindsay Lohan in Catherine Malandrino silk pintuck dress with bubble skirt, LG Scarlet HDTV Launch Party, Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, April 2008.

It must have been a memorable sight in the still austere post-war world, a sheath dress made voluminous with layers of organza or tulle, the result a cocoon-like dress with which Pierre Cardin (1922-2022) and Hubert de Givenchy (1927-2018) experimented in 1954 and 1958, respectively. A year later, Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008) for Dior added the combination of a dropped waist dress and bubble skirt; post-modernism had arrived.  For dressmakers, bubble fashion presented a structural challenge and mass-production became economically feasible only because of advances in material engineering, newly available plastics able to be molded in a way that made possible the unique inner construction and iconic drape of the fabric.  For that effect to work, bubble skirts must be made with a soft, pliable fabric and the catwalk originals were constructed from silk, as are many of the high end articles available today but mass-market copies are usually rendered from cotton, polyester knits, satin or taffeta.

The bubble in the 1950s by Pierre Cardin (left), Givenchy (centre) & Dior (right).  Strikingly, while fashions can change, the preferred models remain much the same.

The bubble skirt was never a staple of the shows in the sense that it would be missing from annual or seasonal collections, sometimes for a decade or more and sales were never high, hardly surprising given it was not often a flattering look for women above a certain age (perhaps anyone aged over eight or nine).  Deconstructing the style hints at why: a hemline which loops around and comes back up (created sometimes by including a tighter bottom half with the bulk of additional material above), it formed a shape not dissimilar to a pillow midway through losing its stuffing.  For that reason, models caution the look works best when combined with a sleek, fitted top to emphasize the slimness of the waistline, cinched if necessary with a tie or belt of some sort to delineate when one thing starts and the other finishes.  The bubble needs to be the feature too, avoiding details or accessories which might otherwise distract; if one appears to be wearing a partially un-stuffed pillow, the point needs to be made it’s being done on purpose and the obvious way that's achieved is to ensure it's the focus piece.  Really, tempting though it may seem in the catalogue, it's a style for experts in a narrow BMI (body mass index) range.

US model Karlie Kloss (b 1992), Met Gala 2026, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, May 2026 (left) and a single, long-stemmed white tulip (right).  The event's “dress code” for 2026 was “fashion is art” though at the Met Gala it's more “suggested theme” than enforced code and designers long have interpreted things liberally.  That liberality sometimes has assumed such a level of abstraction that Met Gala outfits have defied attempts to see a link with the code but in a white, tulipesque bubble dress, Ms Kloss looked artistic enough to be thought commendably on-theme.

TikTok and Instagram influencer Ella Cervetto (b 2000) in Oh Polly Jessamy (an off-shoulder layered bubble hem corset mini dress) in True Red (available also in Ivory), Sydney, Australia, November 2024.

On the catwalks however, again seemingly every decade or so, the bubble returns, the industry relying on the short attention span of consumers of pop culture inducing a collective amnesia which allows many resuscitations in tailoring to seem vaguely original or at least a novel variation on the theme.  Still, if ever a good case could be made for a take on a whimsical 1950s creation to re-appear, it was the staging of the first shows of the 2020-2021 post-pandemic world and the houses responded, Louis Vuitton, Erdem, Simone Rocha and JW Anderson all with billowy offerings; even seen was an improbably exuberant flourish of volume from Burberry.  What appeared on the post-Covid catwalk seemed less disciplined than the post-war originals, the precise constraints of intricately stitched tulle forsaken to encourage rather more swish and flow, the look romantic rather than decadent.  Generally the reception was polite but for those who hoped for a more adventurous interpretation, history suggests the bubble will be back in a dozen-odd years.

Strapless, pale-pink bubble gown (Look 53) from Balenciaga's Spring/Summer 2026 collection, Paris Fashion Week, October 2025.

By using a structural bubble hem, the gown illustrates how a light-weight fabric can be made to emulate a selective rigidity.  The fashion critics said the oversized glasses were there as an evocation of futurism but the skinnytokers (said to be “the acceptable pro ana”) call it the “bug-eye look” and recommend them because the exaggerated size of the frames and lens creates the visual illusion of making the face appear thinner.  Most catwalk models are of course anyway splendidly slender but skinnytok's skinnysplainers would suggest they’d look good even on them; in such matters, the skinnytokers are the world's foremost experts.  The double-faced fabric was neo gazar (the original gazar a silk organza with a plain weave created by the house in 1957-1958), co-developed by Balenciaga and the textile company Lorma, incorporating a soft silk & wool lamiset weft.  The advantages neo gazar offers are said to be a capacity to maintain a shape without the same extent of internal framework, while being easier to work with than original, more rigid, silk gazar.

Although Look 53 may be a classic case study of the disconnect between what appears on catwalks in headline collections and stuff actually sold, that’s not a criticism because such pieces must be assessed on the basis of fulfilling their intended purpose and that this creation admirably did.  Pierpaolo Piccioli’s (b 1967) first collection for the house (after a long stint at Valentino) was much anticipated by critics, most of whom appear to have been impressed, noting the designer’s mastery handling of the distinctive “house codes” Balenciaga has over the decades made signatures.  So everybody liked the clothes but whether the show notes were of much help is uncertain, notably the text: “The meaning of Balenciaga is a methodology.  The process of creation as ideology, as identity, an expression of humanity and human invention.”  The collection deserved to be judged on its merits but what to make of the show notes?  It was grammatically coherent English and so laden with words and phrases with recognizable semantic associations that, in a strictly linguistic sense, the passage couldn’t be devoid of meaning but what would be concluded by those not students of textual deconstruction?  It was of course a delight for those students because it was an exemplar of what in literary theory is called “semantic inflation” (or “floating signifiers”), abstract nouns arranged in a way that might be used by sentences saying something profound while yielding no precise meaning.  Structurally, what each phrase did was substitute a metaphorical association for a concrete predication; nothing could be proved or falsified.

Walmart Mission and Vision Statement: No background in literary deconstruction required.

Just about every process of course has a “method” with “methodology” used just as a “fancy” way of making what seems an obvious point and while the process of creation certainly can be an expression of an ideology, something more specific in the text may have helped.  After all, what people create is by definition “an expression of humanity and human invention”, that applying equally to bubble dresses, hamburgers and nuclear weapons.  Still, while not as succinct a statement as something like E=mc², the show notes were not useless because earnest students of marketing effortlessly would identify the ritualistic, atmospheric prose as part of the discourse of luxury branding which needs to convey characteristics such as “edginess”, “avant-garde sensibility”, “intellectual seriousness” and a certain distance from the vulgar business of selling cheap clothes to the working class shopping at places like Walmart.  Between themselves, in expressions, gestures, clothing and more, the rich often communicate in intricate or elaborate codes not obvious to others.  Positioning the company in the cultural & economic milieu of those used to abstractions, Balenciaga would be assured the folk who buy their garments could (unlike the literalists at price-tag-focused Walmart), interpret connotative meaning despite the absence of denotative precision, the trick being to read not what is said but what is meant.  Indeed, so impressed might some of them have been by the show notes they may even have “sampled” chunks of the text for their next mission statement because it’s hard to improve on: “Recollection rather than tribute, shadows of Balenciaga’s architectonic shapes are embedded in the actuality of today—bold and disruptive volumes applied to clothes that define our modern wardrobe.  A vocabulary of contemporaneity, entirely transformed through approach.”

Bench

Bench (pronounced bench)

(1) A long seat (without arm or back-rest) for two or more people:

(2) A seat occupied by an official, especially a judge in a courtroom.

(3) Such a seat as a symbol of the office of an individual judge or the judiciary.

(4) The office or dignity of various other officials, or the officials themselves.

(5) In certain team sports, the seat (literally or figuratively) on which the reserve (substitute) players sit during a game while not playing and on which “starting side” players sit while substituted.

(6) The quality and number of the players named as substitutes.

(7) By extension, the quality and number of professionals or experts in reserve, to be called upon as needed:

(8) As a clipping of workbench, the worktable of those engaged in trades.

(9) In interior design, certain fixed flat surfaces (kitchen bench, bathroom bench etc).

(10) A platform on which animals or objects are placed for exhibition.

(11) In farming, a hollow on a hillside formed by sheep.

(12) In surveying, a bracket used to mount land surveying equipment onto a stone or a wall.

(13) In certain legislatures, as “front bench” (the office-holding members of a government or opposition who sit on the bench at the front of their side of the assembly), “back bench” (those elected members not appointed to an office who sit on benches behind) and “cross-bench” (those not members of the party in government or formal opposition who sit on other benches).  The terms are sometimes literal but depending on an assembly’s architecture or the size of a government’s majority, others can sometimes “overflow” to the physical “cross benches”.  Thus there are “front benchers”, “back benchers” & “cross benchers” (sometimes hyphenated).

(14) In geography, a shelf-like area of rock with steep slopes above and below, especially one marking a former shoreline.

(15) In extractive mining, a step or working elevation in a mine.

(16) In science (usually as “at the bench”), to distinguish between being engaged actively in research and concurrent or subsequent administrative functions.

(17) To furnish with benches (now rare).

(18) To seat on a bench or on the bench (now rare).

(19) In extractive mining, to cut away the working faces of benches.

(20) In certain team sports, to substitute or remove a player from a game or relegate them to the reserve squad.

Pre 1000: From the Middle English bench, benk & bynk, from the Old English benc (bench; long seat (especially if backless)), from then Proto-West Germanic banki, from the Proto-Germanic bankon & bankiz (bench), from the primitive Indo-European bheg.  It was cognate with the Scots benk & bink, the West Frisian bank, the Dutch bank, the Old High German Bank, the Old Norse bekkr, the Old Frisian benk, the Danish bænk, the Swedish bänk and the Icelandic bekkur, all from a Germanic source and all of which meant “bench”.  In the Old English there were the verbs bencian (to make benches) and bencsittend (one who sits on a bench).  The dialectal spellings benk & bink are both long obsolete.  Bench & benching are nouns & verbs, bencher is a noun, benched is a verb & adjective and benchy & benchlike are adjectives; the noun plural is benches.

The source of the idea of the “bench as a type of long seat” is thought to come from riparian imagery (natural earthen incline beside a body of water) and etymologists speculate the original notion was of a “man-made earthwork used as a seat”.  Bench was from the late fourteenth century used of the tables on which merchants displayed their wares and that may have been a borrowing from the reference to the seat the judge would occupy in a court of law, that use emerging early in the 1300s and coming soon to mean “judges collectively, office of a judge, the judiciary”.  Whether it was actually an allusion to customers “judging the goods displayed” is speculative.  The use in team sports of “the bench” being the “reserve or substitute team members” was drawn from the actual physical bench on the sideline on which those players would sit while not on the field.  The earliest known reference to the existence of furniture used for this purpose is from the US in 1899 but extending this generally to the “reserve of players” in baseball, football etc seems not to have begun until 1909.  In sport, the idiomatic forms include “bench player” (one habitually selected only in the reserves and not the “starting side”), “benched” (a player substituted during play and “sent to the bench”, either because of poor performance or as part of a planned rotation, “injury bench” (players substituted due to injury), “bench warmer (or “bench sitter”, or “bench jockey”) (one whose career has plateaued as a “bench player”, “warming the bench”) 

Bench has attracted many modifiers describing use including “bench grinder”, “bench saw”, “bench drill”, “sawbench”, “kitchen bench”, “deacon's bench”, “friendship bench”, “bench easel”, “mourners' bench”, “piano bench” (a “piano stool” for two), “preacher’s bench” etc.  The noun & verb “benchmark” refers to the optimal results obtained when testing something or someone on a “test bench” although the use is often conceptual, a physical “test bench” not necessarily part of the processes and even some structures in engineering referred to as a “test bench” may bear no relationship to any actual “bench” however described.

Of seats

Bench seats ranged from the functional to the extravagant.

1971 Holden HQ Belmont Station Sedan (station wagon or estate-car) (left) in turquoise vinyl and 1974 Imperial LeBaron four-door hardtop (right) in chestnut tufted leather though not actually “rich Corinthian leather” which was (mostly) exclusive to the Cordoba (1975-1983) until late 1975 when not only did the Imperial's brochures mention "genuine Corinthian leather (available at extra cost)" but for the first time since 1954 the range was referred to as the "Chrysler Imperial", a harbinger the brand was about to be retired.  Imperial's advertising copy noted of the brochure photograph above: “...while the passenger restraint system with starter interlock is not shown, it is standard on all Imperials.”; the marketing types didn't like seat-belts messing up their photos.  While all of the big three (GM, Ford & Chrysler) had tufted interiors in some lines, it was Chrysler which displayed the most commitment to the extravagance although regrettably, some testers at the time reported than while they looked accommodating, after an hour of so, they proved quite uncomfortable.  They contrasted the eye-catching seats in the Imperial with the "hard" pews provided by Mercedes-Benz which proved supportive and comfortable even after hours behind the wheel, concluding backs, shoulders and legs were a more reliable guide to orthopedic correctness  than visual appeal, Teutonic austerity proving more luxurious than Detroit's rococo.

Boring: Rear bench seat in 1963 Chrysler 300J.

The 1963 Chrysler 300J was the rarest (ie the one fewest customers purchased) of the eleven “letter-series” cars (1955-1965) and whether or not related to its performance in the market, one thing which at the time attracted comment was a rear bench seat replacing the eye-catching twin buckets and full length console which had for three seasons appeared in its predecessors (300F, 300G & 300H).  In 1963, the industry, chasing volume & profits, had begin the process of “de-contenting” their cars, either ceasing the availability of stuff expensive to make or install or moving such items to the option list; by the late 1960s even Cadillac would be afflicted.  The Chrysler “letter series” 300s had begin in 1955 with what many had assumed was a one-off high-performance model created by mixing & matching trim from the Imperial line (newly that year established as a stand-alone marquee) as well as tuning the mechanical components for speed.  Existing initially to homologate stuff for use in competition, not only did the C-300 sell in a pleasing volume but it was such a success as a image-building “halo car” the model was retained for 1956 and dubbed 300B with a further nine annually following until the end of the line in with the 300L 1965, each release appending as an identifier the next letter in the alphabet (thus 300C, 300D etc).

Much more swish: Rear bucket seats in 1961 Chrysler 300G.

However, as well as the dubious distinctions of being the least popular and being the only one the series between 1957-1965 not to be offered as a convertible, the 300J represents a quirk in the naming sequence, Chrysler skipping the letter “I”.  That was done for the same reason there are so few “I cup” bras, the rationale being “I” might be confused with the numeric “1” so most manufacturers go straight from “H cup” to “J cup” although some plug the gap with a “HH cup” and there are even those who stop at “G”, handing incremental increases in volume with “GG” & “GGG” cups; it does seem an industry crying out for an ISO.  There’s no evidence Chrysler ever pondered a “300HH”.  Like Chrysler and most bra manufacturers, the USAF (US Air Force) also opted to skip “I” when allocating a designation for the updated version of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress (1952-1962 and still in service).  Between the first test flight of the B-52A in 1954 and the B-52H entering service in 1962, the designations B-52B, B-52C, B-52D, B-52E, B-52F & B-52G sequentially had been used but after flirting with whether to use B52J as an interim designation (reflecting the installation of enhanced electronic warfare systems) before finalizing the series as the B-52K after new engines were fitted, in 2024 the USAF announced the new line would be the B-52J and only a temporary internal code would distinguish those not yet re-powered.  Again, “I” was not used so nobody would think there was a B521.

1958 Metropolitan Hardtop in two-tone Frost White and Berkshire Green over black and white houndstooth cloth and vinyl.

Under various marques, the Metropolitan was in production between 1953-1961 and its cartoon-like appearance was a result of applying the motifs of the standard-sized US automobile to something much smaller and in that it was conceptually similar in concept to the more severely executed Triumph Mayflower (1949-1953) which took as a model the “knife-edged” lines of the Daimlers and Rolls-Royces bodied by Hooper.  Although most four-door cars with front bench seats featured full-width cushions (one which one’s butt sat) and squabs (on which one’s back rested), most two door models had “split squabs” which individually could be folded forward, affording someone access to the rear passenger compartment without disturbing anyone sitting on the other side of the front seat.

1958 Metrolpoitan.

The split squabs erect (left), the passenger's folded forward to afford entry to the rear bench (centre) and the rear bench's squab laid flat to allow access to the trunk or provide a larger storage space (right).  In modern five-seaters, the trend has been the so-called 40/60 split seat which allows two passengers still to sit on the back seat while extending the trunk space into the cabin, the origin of the idea reputedly the desire of skiers to carry their skis & poles without the need to fit external racks.  The Metropolitan also had a fold-down rear bench, a common feature in many station wagons, SUVs (sports utility vehicle) and such but for the diminutive Metropolitan it was essential because there was no trunk (boot) lid.  Though not unique, that was unusual in four-seat sedans (which the Metropolitan sort of was) although some sports cars also lacked the fitting including the early Austin-Healey Sprite (the so-called bugeye or frogeye (depending on the side of the Atlantic where one sat)) and every Chevrolet Corvette between the release of the C2 in 1962 and the C5 in 1998.

Bench seat for four: the improbable 1948 Davis Divan.  The blue car (one of a dozen survivors of the 17 built) was restored by the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles where it is on display.

In cars and such, a “bench seat” differs from a “bucket” or “individual” seat in that comfortably it can accommodate three occupants, the comparison with furniture being the difference between a “chair” and a “sofa”.  In commercial vehicles, bench seats commonly can seat four but in cars the recommended (and eventually legal) limit was typically three although the truly bizarre Davis Divan (1948) featured a bench allowing four abreast seating for adults, something which would have been an interesting experience for the quartet because a quirk of the suspension system was the long, pointed nose of the thing actually rose under braking.  The three-wheeled Divan was the brainchild of “automotive entrepreneur” (some historians are less kind) Glen Gordon “Gary” Davis (1904-1973) who put some effort into building the prototypes, not enough into preparation for actual production but much into raising funds from “investors”, a goodly chunk of which apparently was spent on real estate, entertaining and mink coats for “friends” (with all that implies).  He had a flair for slogans so many investors were attracted but the project proved chimeric, Mr Davis subsequently tried and convicted of fraud & grand theft, spending two years in prison.  The name Divan was used as an allusion to the car's wide bench seat.  It was from the French divan, from the Ottoman Turkish دیوان (divan), from the Iranian Persian دیوان (divân), from the Classical Persian دیوان (dēwān), from Middle Persian dpywʾn' or dywʾn' (dēwān) (archive, collected writings, compilation of works”), from the Sumerian dub.  The sense was of a sofa-like piece of furniture comprising a mattress lying against the wall and on either the floor or an elevated structure.  Part of the tradition of interior decorating in the Middle East, in the West divans are sometimes called “ottomans”; those with an internal storage compartment: “box ottomans”.

Four American Airlines stewardesses proving the bench seat had “hiproom for four adults; its foam rubber cushion beautifully upholstered in long-wearing synthetic fabrics.”  Dr Phil Tiemeyer's Women and the Jet Age. A Global History of Aviation and Flight Attendants (2025) explores the post-war aviation industry and the not always happy part played by flight attendants.

Resembling a large shoe mounted on a tricycle undercarriage, so much was strange about the Davis Divan that in 1948 the four-abreast seating configuration probably didn’t seem so startling.  Still, the public were aware of the unusual feature because among the many publicity shots distributed was one of four American Airlines flight attendants (then called stewardesses) perched, apparently happily, on the bench seat while Mr Davis looked on approvingly.  Presumably, the four young ladies were relaxed and comfortable because the space available was rather more than airlines these days provide for economy-class passengers in airliners.  To this day, there are those who defend Mr Davis and claim the corporate failure was a consequence of his managerial ineptitude rather than constructive fraud but as well as the mink coats, there were clues some of techniques used to raise what would now be called VC (venture capital) were suspect, including the claim the movie star Greta Garbo (1905-1990) was one of the investors.  Ms Garbo was by 1948 already legendarily reclusive, never gave interviews and journalists who sent type-written questions (including a return SSAE (stamped self-addressed envelope)) were ignored.  If any alleged “investor” was unlikely to contradict Mr Davis, it was Greta Garbo.

Mannerist but not quite surrealist: Some artistic licence taken.

Advertising for the 1961 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe (left) with images by Art Fitzpatrick (1919–2015) & Van Kaufman (1918-1995) and a (real) 1961 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe (right) fitted with Pontiac's much admired 8-lug wheels, their exposed centres actually the brake drum to which the rim (in the true sense of the word) directly was bolted.  Four could be seated on the Bonneville's front seat but the packaging efficiency was not as good as was found on the Divan; although the car was 8.2 inches (208 mm) wider (78.2 (1,986) vs 72.0 (1,829)), at 63.4 inches (1,610 mm), the Pontiac’s front seat was narrower than the 64 inches (1,626 mm) found in the Divan.  The inefficiency inside was reflected under the hood (bonnet).  Although wide, even Detroit's large-displacement V8s of the post-war years were, by historic standards, relatively short, but to achieve the desired look (longer, lower, wider), the stylists rendered long noses and such was the capaciousness, a straight-8 or V16 could have been installed.  Remarkably, as a marker of distinction, some of these machines even had their noses extended a few inches, just "for the look", creating even more waste space.  Undeniably, something like the 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix was dramatic but it was emblematic of an era of self indulgence. 

Had one taken seriously some of the images used to advertise US cars in the 1960s, one might have assumed Mr Davis had been so influential that bench seats might by 1961 seat five but sadly, the work of Fitzpatrick & Kaufman (best remembered for what they rendered for GM’s (General Motors) PMD (Pontiac Motor Division) took some artistic licence and one piece of exaggeration was width.  The pair rendered memorable images but certainly exaggerated things where they though it would help created what were even then admired as simulacrums rather than something to be taken literally.  While PMD’s “Year of the Wide-Track” (introduced in 1959) is remembered as a slogan (the original advertising copy read “Wide Track Wheels” but was soon clipped to “Wide Track” because it was snappier), it wasn’t just advertising shtick, the decision taken to increase the track of Pontiacs by 5 inches (127 mm) because the 1958 frames were carried-over for the much wider 1959 bodies, rushed into production because the sleek new Chryslers had rendered the old look frumpy and suddenly old-fashioned.  That spliced-in five inches certainly enhanced the look but the engineering was sound, the wider stance did genuinely improve handling.  Just to make sure people got the message about the “wide” in the “Wide Track” theme, the advertising artwork deliberately exaggerated the width of the cars they depicted and while it was the era of “longer, lower, wider” (and PMD certainly did their bit in that), things never got quite that wide.  Had they been, the experience of driving would have felt something like steering an aircraft carrier's flight deck.

Davis Divan: Even if the car wasn’t “real”, the brochure was well-done, reflecting the influences of Art Deco and Mid-Century Modernism.

Although not in US terms a “big” car, at 72 inches (6 feet, 1.8 metres) in width, the Davis Divan was comparatively wide, as of course it had to be make the four-place bench seat viable.  Still, with an apparently aerodynamic body made from aluminium (taking advantage of the ample stock of the metal created when contacts for military aircraft had been cancelled after the unexpectedly abrupt end of World War II (1939-1945)) it weighed in at a svelte 2,450 pounds (1,110 kg) so the small, four cylinder engines would have delivered low fuel consumption and provided adequate, if not sparkling, performance although if the shape was as slippery as it appeared, the claimed top speed of 115 mph (185 km/h) may have been plausible; as far as is known, no one has ever attempted to verify the claim.  In a booming economy in which new cars were in high-demand, the package must have seemed attractive to investors, especially as it was expected to sell for what seemed a competitive US$995.

One of the mink coats made infamous in the court proceedings in which Mr Davis was handed a two-year sentence after being convicted of fraud & grand theft.

In retrospect, the projected price was as remote from economic reality as the 990 Reichsmarks (RM) the Nazi Party in 1938 promised would be the cost Germans would pay for a new KdF-Wagen.  The Kraft durch Freude-Wagen was the “people’s car” marketed by the Party’s Kraft durch Freude (Strength Through Joy) operation which also ran cruise liners and holiday resorts and although not one car had been delivered to a civilian customer by the end of the war, it would subsequently enjoy much global success as the Volkswagen Type 1 (VW Beetle, 1938-2003).  As late as 1943 some of the 340,000-odd Germans obediently still were making their weekly payment of 5 RM and it would be more than a decade before some received any form of refund.  While over 21 million VW Beetles were made, Davis Divan production only ever reached 16 or 17 (including three specialized military (non-combat-vehicles) variants) and remarkably, at least 12 have survived as curiosities in museums and private collections.

Of law

Bench seat for four: A gang of four Sceggs.  Sceggs should not be confused with the homophonic skegs, a feature from shipbuilding.

In courts of the common law tradition the terms “bench” & “bar” date from the medieval age and remain part of courtroom terminology.  “The bench” was originally the seat on which judges at while presiding, the early furniture apparently a simple wooden bench as one would find at many long dining tables and in the manner typical of the way English evolves, “bench” came to be used of judges collectively and of the institution of the judiciary itself.  The “bar” was the physical barrier separating the spectators and participants of a trial from the area where the lawyers and judges conducted the proceedings, thus the “bar table” being that at which the advocates sat and the right to practice law before the bench being “passing the bar”, familiar in the modern US phrase “passing the bar exam” or the English form “called to the bar”.  As “bench” became a synecdoche for the judiciary, “bar” came to be used of the lawyers although in jurisdictions where there is a separation between those who appear in court (barristers) and those who do not (solicitors) “bar” was applied only to the former and even after reforms in some abolished the distinctions between certain branches of the law, specialist practitioners continue often to be referred to as the “equity bar” & “common law bar”.  There’s thus the apparent anomaly of the use of “bencher” (recorded in the 1580s) being used to mean “senior member of an inn of court”, all of whom would have been members of “the bar”.  Presumably the idea was one of “approaching the bench” or (more mischievously) “aspiring to the bench”.  The bench-warrant (one issued by a judge, as opposed to one issued by a magistrate or justice of the peace (JP) dates from the 1690s. 

An illuminated manuscript (circa 1460) which is the earliest known depiction of the Court of King's Bench in session.

In England, the Court of King’s Bench (KB) (or Queen’s Bench (QB) depending on who was on the throne) began in the twelfth century as a court at which the monarch literally presided; it was a circuit court which would, from time-to-time, travel around the counties hearing cases.  The Court of KB was thus in some sense “virtual”, whatever wooden bench upon which he sat becoming the KB for the duration of the trial.  Kings would cease to sit as judges and the KB later was interpolated into the system of courts (there would be many internecine squabbles over the years) until (as the Court of Queen’s Bench), under the Supreme Court of Judicature Act (1873), it, along with the Court of Common Pleas, the Court of Exchequer and Court of Chancery were merged to become the High Court of Justice, each of the absorbed institutions becoming a division.  The Common Pleas and Exchequer Division were abolished in 1880 when the High Court was re-organized into the Chancery Division, Queen's Bench Division and the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division (the latter memorably known as “wills, wives & wrecks” in legal slang).  The origin of the KB is a hint of why a king or queen can’t appear before a court in the UK or other places in which they remain head of state: Although it is in a practical sense now a legal fiction, all courts of law are “their courts” of which they remain the highest judge.  The most famous (or infamous) relic of all this is the power of pardon which although no longer a personal power in the hands of the king, remains exactly that for a US president and is the only head of power in the US constitution not subject to "checks & balances", a POTUS able to grant pardons by ex-officio fiat.  In that sense, the POTUS is the "chief magistrate" mentioned in the Federalist Papers (1788) although the authors used the term to distinguish a republic's president from European monarchs by stressing the execution of legal duties under the rule of law rather than sovereign privilege.  Not all presidents have been much troubled by that distinction. 

Benches afforced with foreign judges, the Chinese Communist Party and Hong Kong’s national security law

Multi-national benches are not uncommon.  There have been courts operating under the auspices of the LoN (League of Nations;1920-1946) & UN (United Nations; since 1945) such as the ICC (International Criminal Court), the ICJ (International Court of Justice) and the various ad-hoc bodies set up to handle prosecutions related to crimes in specific locations (Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia etc) and the UK had the JCPC (Judicial Committee of the Privy Council) which included senior judges from the Commonwealth.  The JCPC functioned not only as a final court of appeal for Commonwealth nations (a role for a handful it still fulfils) but also as the appellate tribunal for a number of domestic bodies including some ecclesiastical bodies, admiralty matters and even matters from the usually obscure DCRCVS (Disciplinary Committee of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons).  There were also the IMTs (International Military Tribunal) which tried matters arising from the conduct of German & Japanese defendants from World War II (1939-1945), the bench of the latter Tokyo Tribunal notably diverse although those of the subsequent dozen trials in Nuremberg after the first (1945-1946) were staffed exclusively by US judges.  A number of former colonies also use foreign judges (and not always from the former colonial power).

However, what remains unusual is the matter of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) deciding to have foreign judges serve on The HKCFA (Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal), established in 1997 when the HKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) was created upon Beijing regaining sovereignty (under the IC2S (one country, two systems)) principle, with the end of British colonial rule.  At that point, the HKCFA became the territory’s highest judicial institution, replacing the JCPC in London.  On the HKCFA’s bench sits the Chief Justice (a Hong Kong national), several “Permanent Judges” and some two-dozen odd “Non-permanent Judges” who may be recruited from Hong Kong or from among lawyers of the requisite background from any overseas common law jurisdiction.  As non-permanent judges, appointments have been drawn (from bar & bench) from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Lindsay Lohan, foreign judge on the bench of The Masked Singer (2019), a singing competition, the Australian franchise of a format which began in the ROK (Republic of Korea (South Korea)) as King of Mask Singer.

While it may seem strange a developed country like the PRC (People’s Republic of China (the old "Red China"), the world’s second largest economy, a permanent member of the UNSC (UN Security Council) and since 1965 the final member of the original “Club of Five” declared nuclear powers) would have foreign judges sitting on the bench of one of its superior courts, on the mainland the PRC operates under a civil law system which, like the tradition in continental European, is based primarily on written statutes and codes (with ultimate effective control remaining with the CCP), unlike common law systems, which rely heavily on case law and judicial precedent.  As a British colony, Hong Kong had used common law and under that system had become a major regional and international presence, something in part due to its judicial system being perceived as fair and uncorrupted; it was a “rule of law” state.

In the PRC there simply wasn’t a body of judges or lawyers with the necessary background in common law to staff the territory’s highest appellate court and significantly, at the time of the handover from the Raj, Hong Kong was of great importance to the PRC’s economy and the CCP understood it would be critical to maintain confidence in the rule of law, investors and overseas corporations with a presence in Hong Kong needing to be assured matters such as contracts would continue as before to be enforceable.  So it was, literally, “business as usual”, whatever may have been the fears about the political undercurrent.  The growth of the mainland economy since 1997 has been such that the HKSAR now constitutes only a small fraction of the national economy but analysts (some of whom provide advice to the CCP) understand the linkages running through the territory remain highly useful for Beijing and some long-standing conduits are still used for back-channel communications about this and that.  As far as business is concerned, the operation of the legal system has remained mostly satisfactory, even though the CCP ensured Beijing retained a reserved power to overturn the HKCFA’s decisions, the "rule of the CCP" sometimes thought preferable to the implications of "rule of law".

The colonial era building where now sits the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal.  Formally opened in 1912, it was built with granite in the neo-classical style and between 1985-2011 was the seat of the Legislative Council (LegCo).

However, in 2020, a “National Security Law” (technically the Law of the People's Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and thus usually written in English as the “NSL”) was imposed.  While not aimed at the regulation of business or economic matters, it was wide in scope and claims of application (the extraterritoriality extending worldwide), essentially extending to the territory many of the laws of the mainland regarding “political activities” and matters of “free speech”, the latter interpreted by the CCP in a way not unique but certainly different from Western understandings.  Citing the “political situation”, two British judges in June 2024 resigned from the HKCFA, prompted by Beijing’s recent crackdown on dissent in the city, something made possible by the NSL.  In his published letter, one judge, his rationale for departure notwithstanding, did say he continued “…to have full confidence in the court and the total independence of its members.”  As early as 2020, one Australian judge had already resigned, followed by two others from the UK, both saying the Hong Kong government had “…departed from values of political freedom and freedom of expression.”  The CCP may have anticipated some objection from the overseas judges because, since the passage of the NSL, no overseas judge has been allocated to hear the “security-related” cases.  The judicial disquiet seemed not to trouble the territory’s chief executive, former police officer Ka-chiu (John Lee; b 1957) who said the overseas appointments would continue to help “…maintain confidence in the judicial system and… strong ties with other common law jurisdictions.”  In response to the departing judge’s comment, he claimed the NSL had “no effect” on judicial independence and the only difference was that “…national security is now better safeguarded.”

Early in June, the Hong Kong authorities arrested two men and one woman attending a FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association (the International Federation of Association Football that, for historic reasons, recognizes more countries than the UN)) World Cup qualification match against Iran, their offence being “turning their backs to the pitch and not standing during the performance of the national anthem”, a police spokesman adding that anybody “…who publicly and intentionally insults the national anthem in any way in committing a crime.”  Before the NSL was imposed, bolshie Hongkongers were known to boo the anthem to express discontent with their rulers; that definitely will no longer be tolerated.  The match ended Iran 4: Hong Kong 2 but despite that, more than ever the HKSAR and the Islamic Republic have much in common.