There are FT colleagues in London, New York and Brussels who will shudder at this disclosure, but 66 per cent of the three men in the Tokyo bureau are currently wearing shorts. In the office. In meetings. In bare-kneed professionalism.
The existence of the one office hold-out is important. His perseverance serves as a reminder that the brainwashing powers of the trouser cult remain strong and, incredibly, that the shorts debate is far from settled. That is possibly because the pro-shorts lobby has historically done such a poor job of championing the male lower leg. Better branding would help: we are not shorts-wearers, for a start, but shin-maxxers.
There are, alas, ever fewer places on Earth where the acceptability of shorts in a white-collar context should really be in question. Summers are more dangerously vehement than in the past, with record-breaking temperatures in western Europe this week. Suit-wearers (as a generalised decision-making genus) are looking less plausibly committed to longer-term climate solutions (beyond turning-up the air-conditioning) than they did a few years ago.