The Legacy of Route Sixty-Six

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Visit backmarket. com or the Backmarket app to shop now The economist Hello and welcome to The Intelligence fromrom the Economist. I'm Rosie Blgh. Today on the show, Japan's divorce laws get a rethink, and this week as America's iconic route sixty six turns one hundred, we take you on a road trip First up though Today in Tehran, huge crowds of mourners gathered for the main funeral procession for Ayatllah Ali Khamene The former Supreme leader of Iran was killed in February On the first day of massive strikes by America and Israel With the ceasefire holding, at least for now, the Iranian authorities have finally deemed it safe to allow this very public demonstration. It's a religious event as devotees mark the death of their spiritual figurehead But as others out on the streets raise their fists or wave flags with Donald Trump's face on Some chanting slogans calling for vengeance This is also a deeply political moment The authorities are billing Hamermini's funeral as a referendum on the future of the Islamic Republic Nicholas Palam is our Middle East correspondent They're celebrating his death and the funeral, not as a defeat, but as a vindication, a final triumph over foreign enemies, something very much in keeping with the arc of Shia tradition. So it's a display of strength But at the same time, there are deep cracks in the regime's hold on the show We'll on to what this all shows in a minute, but just explain to us what an eyatoller is and why this moment of the funeral is so important An Iyatlla is the spiritual authority in Shia Islam. they have command over followers across the Shia world But what was particularly unique in Iran was that The Spiritual authority was also the political authority. It was the supreme leader of the country ever since the Islamic Revolution of nineteen seventy nine been to all intents and purposes a theocracy and at the helm of this was Ali Hamani who had ruled over Iran as both a spiritual authority but as a suupreme leader for the last thirty seven years The country is now at a crossroads is really not clear whether that theocracy is going to survive This funeral has been delayed since February when he was killed. What have we seen in the Days of mourning so far They're an extraordinary six days of funeral ceremonies And we're about halfway through Until now we've seen him lying in state surrounded by red tulips in a stadium sized prayer hole, the Masallah in central Tehran. Today we're going to see his coffin carried through the capitol before traveling to homeome. hundred and fifty kilometers to the south. It will then go across into Iraq Thereby revealing the Islamic Republic's reach in the region and From there, it will be flown to MashHad, which is birthplace of Hamine and will become his burial place nearly one thousand nine hundred kilometers to the east It's about demonstrating the strength of the Islamic Republic and its rulers At home, they've had a very rocky past few months, not just because of the war which pummeled many of their bases, but also because of the demonstrations that preceded them when there nationwide calls for the Islamic Republic to go. and It's also demonstrating its strength in the region and to the world. I don't think it's a coincidence that it's overlaap with the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the United States. And who's at the funeral Pop stars have been enlisted to composed pages to Famin businessmen have been prevailed upon to donate meat and rice by the tan. There are tents of supplies lining the procession route to encourage Iranians to join the procession. Millions of civil servants have been given the days off. You've got clerics who are coming from seminaries across the country Thousands of buses have been brought on board to ferry mourners. And there's even an app which provides accommodation for people coming from outside Tehran And as you'd expect, it's the most prominent commanders, the generals and the politicians You've seen President Mased Pazashkan The Revolutionary Guards Chief, Ahmed Vahidi, you've seen three of Kamini's sons, but there's one critical absence The opposed successor, the current suupreme leader must have a hammine And so far since his father's killing on the twentyi eighth of feebruary and his appointment a few days later Nothing has been either seen or heard of him Islamic Convention dictates that he should be leading funeral prayers And of course there was still three days left to go the funeral ceremonies, it might be that he turns up on the last day. and it may well be that the authorities will say that he's absent for his own protection, but the fact that he's absent that he hasn't been seen or heard of since his appointment is leading to major questions in Iran about who is actually in charge So we've got an absent leader, but otherwise a real attempt to show that the Iranian regime is very much in place since the strikes by Israel and America Quion, how strong is the regime in fact right now I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that they have being emboldened by the outcome of this last forty day war with America and Israel, they are continuing to display their strength and their control of the strait of Homulz and demanding that all shipping there goes through their shipping lanes and through their procedures They were looking extremely wobbly before this current war Not only had there been this nationwide mobilization against them, but the repression that followed alienated the population even further. And what you've seen as a result of this war is To some extent, the country pulling together. and Much of the population who are disenchanted with his rule are just going to be absent altogether And we know that peace talks with the US are on hold while this funeral takes place and while, as you say, the US has its own celebrations. Can you tell me about the current state of those discussions We're only partalfway through the sixty day ceasef And that ceasefire period was supposed to resolve all the outstanding issues the nucleophile sanctions passage through the Strait of Homz Iran's place within the region All of those questions remain unanswered. And this hope of a new era of relations between the United States and Iran still This seems a long way off And if anything, I think it'sort typified by this fist that been part of the symbolism of this funeral. You've got Camenet's fist that is flying from flags across Tehran and that's what symbolizes a mood of defiance, retaliation and of revenge for his death Thank you very much for talking to me Thank you, Rosie. Always a pleasure Monday.ot com AI agents took over my work, and I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. I stay in the loop only when it matters. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday d. com You want to get your backyard summer ready, but you don't want to break the bank? Wayfare gets it, planning on dining alfresco or relaxing poolside Wayfair has everything you need to prep your space. Shop now and save up to seventy percent off during Wayfair's Fourth of July clearance. sccore huge deals on outdoor furniture, area rugs, and more. We're talking thousands of products for every style and budget. Plus, sururprise Flash deals July sixth. Don't wait Shop Wayfare's Fourth of July clearance now through july sixth at wayfare dot com d Pay fair, every style, every home. . When Shibahashi Satoko divorced her husband a decade ago, she didn't want her ten year old son to see the father. Moaka Ida writes about Japan The breakup was ugly She resented her ex and Hated the thought of him rejoicing over reunion And for about a year, she kept the two of them apart. But then she came across another divorce mother who was keeping her child away from the father And she remembers thinking, what a terrible mother. But then she realized she's no better than her Soon after that, she called her ex husband to arrange a meeting and since then He has been a part of the boy's life Ms Shibahashi's story is emblematic of a broader shift taking place in Japan So what's going on, Mokca? What is that broader shift taking place in Japan Japan was the only country in the G seven that did not recognize joint custody after divorce non custodial parents technically did have visitation rights, but those rights were weak and easily withheld So for a long time, Japan had a system where the parent granted custody, which tends to be the mother, could usually shut the other out And there was even a government survey in twenty twenty one, which showed that only one in three children of divorced parents had any contact with. with the parent they didn't live with. And even when they did have contact, that interaction is very limited, a few hours a month or something like that But there was a really big shift recent Japan introduced joint custody for the first time, and that follows a revision to a civil code that had gone unchanged for eight decades. And this reflects a really big shift in how the country thinks about family life. So what will that change in the civil code, the change in the law mean for how divorce will work in Japan Well there are a number of layers to this First of all, a joint custody system will require parents even after divorce to keep collaborating, to make key decisions over a child's life. So that includes things like schooling and relocation and moving places. And it also puts parent child contact on a firmer legal footing Is the divorce rate high in Japan So I think there's this perception that East Asia has very strong traditional values and that divorce is uncommon. But as you've discussed on this show recently, divorce rates are going up in China And in Japan, around a quarter of marriages end in divorce, so divorce is actually a normal part of family life Actually, legally speaking, Japan might be among the world's easiest places to get a divorce. instead of seeking a court order as you have to do in Britain or America, if you want to get a divorce in Japan, you only have to sign a document and submit it to the local Ward office. Around nine and ten divorces are settled this way and that might sound smooth and amicable if you compare it against the idea of long and bitter court battles Actually, that also creates a lot of challenges when two people are getting divorce. Usually tempers run hot. so key decisions over visitation or child support are made without a neutral third party to cool things down It seems surprising that the single parent custody norm lasted so long given that context. Why is that? It sort of fits a broader pattern in Japan. There's a lot of laws and rules in the country that have gone untouch for a very long time. Legal change or policy shifts often lag behind what's happening on the ground But I also do think that despite divorce being a normal part of family life, divorce being quite common, there wasn't much of an open conversation around what family should look like after divorce Interesting research by an anthropologist called Alison Alexi, who describes Japan's approach to divorce as following a clean break model The idea is that when two people get divorced and say the man leaves and gets remarried and forms a new family, he should just stay in this new family and he should have nothing to do with the old family To borrow the words of Ms Sibahashi, the divorced mother I mentioned earlier, she said that when an ex spouse leaves the house, they're often treated as if they had died. This clean break seems to have been characteristic of divorce in Japan, but I think a lot of people have started to question that over the years, estranged fathers campaigning for the right to see their children, there was even a French man who had divorced a Japanese woman who staged a hunger strike because he didn't have the right to see his children. Even without the vocabulary to describe it, you're saying that all of these shifts reflect a bigger change in how Japanese people are looking at the family unit. How is it now shaking out? I think there has been major shifts in family dynamics in Japan. Men are playing a bigger role at home and are therefore more involved in the children's lives. So I think that's why we've started to see more advocacy Interestingly, it has also faced some intense backlash as well, but I still do think the law is a move in the right direction Mareca, thank you very much for talking to me Thank you so much for having me, Rosie sixty six is America's most famous highway, running all the way from Chicago to Santa Monica It's memorialized in iconic songs, like Get Your Kicks on by Nackking Cole, TV showhs, and of course, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Roth This year marks not only two hundred and fifty years of America, but a hundred years of cruising this great geographical and cultural artery. Last month, I took a road trip on Route sixty six John Fasman is our senior culture correspondent I did it for two reasons. The first is that I just love a good road trip. And second Goute sixty six, notwithstanding its fame, took me through a part of my own country that I had never seen before John, what is it that makes Route sixty six so famous Well, it was one of America's first major highways. And while the interstates that are set up now go from east to western north to south, route sixty six's shape was unusual. It goes south from Chicago into Oklahoma and then downounds out West. It traverses eight states using paths mostly that settlers and Native Americans had used for centuries It's also an all weather highway. It's not too far north. so it's not impassable with snow in the winter And It's a storied road. Refugees from the dust bowl in the thirties used it to find new lives out westn California John Steinck called us the Mother Road in the Grapes of Wrath. He sent his protagonist, the Jodes out from Oklahoma on route sixty six African Americans used it to migrate out of the south to midwestern industrial cities like Chicago and Stain. Louis, as well as out west And its heyday coincided with the rise of American car culture and pop culture dominance, which meant it became known throughout the world pretty quickly. And what that popularity meant is that businesses, mostly mom and pop shops, competed for customers' eyeballs and wallets. There was this huge flourishing of commercial activity. had giant fiberglass statues advertising roadside hot dog stands, who had motels made up of concrete tepees because it was unusual looking and would get travelers to stop Route sixty six popularized motels, service stations, and arguably the road trip in which the journey is not just a way to get from one place to another. It's the whole point of the trip. And yet some of that car culture is declining. So what's happened since? Well, Route sixty six is picturesque and fascinating. It's also small. It's often just one lane in either direction And starting the nineteen fifties America built the interstate highway system, which really overtook it. It's a much more efficient way to get from one place to another Route sixty six was decommissioned as a highway in the mid nineteen eighties just before its sixtieth birthday And a lot of the small towns that went through died, but they didn't disappear. At least most of them didn't. You can see a few ghost towns on the way if you want And Route sixty six didn't disappear either. It has endured as an iconic American highway that people spend weeks traveling on just to see their country up close and personal We're standing in downtown Jooliette And a couple of things have struck me. The road went out of Chicago through some fairly small towns. Joliette is not a small town, but it's smallish The two things that struck me is that the towns along the route, many of them had Route sixty six sort of signage and attractions And they're trying to milk their association with the road for very good reasons, which is that when the road was designed There were businesses that sprung up around it. And when the interstate system was devised, those businesses started dying So these towns are trying to milk their associations for travelers who are deliberately taking route sixty six rather than doing it out of necessity For The next week, I'm going to take you with me on the Mother Road and introduce you to some of the people I met along the way you excited about this particular tnd? Well, when I was a kid, I watched the television show, of course, and there's songs about it and things like that and it's been fantasized for forever And my wife and I did route sixty six kind of backwards. We started in California and went to Tulser about That was about fifteen years ago in an RV. So we had a great time. So we were in Arizona and standing on the corner of the Eagle song, you know, Cadillac ranch, all that stuff. So we're hoping to see some things along the way. Some of those people are traveling the route Yeah, I'm Eric Wall, and this's my wife, Patty, and we're from McPerson, Kansas We've done Route sixty six several times and with it being the hundred year anniversary, we thought we better do it again. So we're doing part of it this spring and then we're going to do the whole thing with some friends of ours this fall