canary in a coal mine

Economists Give Abenomics Early Thumbs Up

Global economists have generally had little good to say about Japan these past two decades. To the extent it has gotten notice at all in recent years, it has often been as a cautionary tale, the canary in the coal mine, the laboratory experiment for what happens when policy goes awry. When The Wall Street Journal last month asked a group of (mostly) American economists to grade the world’s five leading central bankers, Bank of Japan Gov. Masaaki Shirakawa was ranked — by far — the worst. He was the only one who didn’t get a single A. One-fourth of the respondents gave him a B. The rest gave him a C, D, or F.

http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/

a canary in a coal mineというと、オウム真理教の施設に強制捜査に入った警察の機動隊を連想する人もいると思います（でも新ゼミ生は知らないね）。これは空気に人間よりはるかに敏感なカナリアを炭坑内で飼い、有毒ガスなどを検知した習慣に由来するイディオムで、「警告」や「予兆」の意味で用いられます。Kurt Vonnegutの何とかという小説にもあったと思います（最近は極端に書名などの記憶が...Ah!）。（UG）