IF YOU are worried that the British media is not telling you enough about the Japanese navy, Afghan radio or Wisconsin shoe exporters, a new magazine launching this week might plug the gap.

Monocle, the brainchild of style-bible Wallpaper*creatorTylerBrule,isa high-quality monthly glossy for jet-setters who want an international perspective on the world.

EditedbyformerIndependent On Sundayexecutivefeatureseditor Andrew Tuck, it will be printed in its own B5 size, which is slightly slimmer and shorter than A4. It will major in current affairs,business,arts,cultureand design, and will be backed by a website that will include television-standard video content.

The first edition of the new title will appear on news stands at £5 a copy all over the world on Thursday, weighing in at a heavyweight 244 pages. There will be an initial print run of 150,000 copies.

It includes an 18-page special on Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe's first six months in office. This will be told from the perspective of a reporter who was embedded with the Japanese navy, which has grown to become the second largest in the world.

Brule, right, who will be editor-in-chief, said: "Abe is seen as a more hawkish prime minister than his predecessor Junichiro Koizumi, and if Japan is going to take a more confident role in the region, this will be the tool it uses to assert authority."

The magazine's proposition, which has seen around £3.3 million raised from a series of international investors, is that there are two responses to what Brule sees as our "increasingly mobile society". One is to offer media products that are more rooted in a single local market, but Monocle is trying to do the opposite.

"We are from a second school of thought that firmly believes that there is room to talk to a globetrotting audience that is interested in news and informationthatisnotdeliveredalong national boundaries," he said.

To this end other features will include a piece about a recent visit by Chinese premier Hu Jintao to Africa, looking at his nation's new quasi-colonial role in the region.

There will also be articles about a radio DJ in Afghanistan; the hip-hop scene in Italy and an Austrian company that has developed a reflective technology that will bring daylight into people's basements. It will also carry a piece that looks at whether the success of the Dundee gaming industry draws its inspiration from the mean Scottish streets, which are among the most violent in the developed world.

Access to most of the monocle.com website will be restricted to magazine subscribers, who can sign up for a year for £75. The debut offering will include a 20-minute question and answer session with the chief executive of the company behind the basement daylight invention.

"We are not doing cheap webcasts. It has been shot with two cameras and could run on CNN," said Brule, adding that he hopes initially to attract readers to the site weekly but will add features in the coming months to tempt them each day.

Brule,who launched Wallpaper in 1996 at the age of just 27, said Monocle would have no direct rivals in the UK market, although it would sit alongside The Economist. It would also have similarities in its style of reportage to Vanity Fair, but it will not take an interest in celebrities.

While the majority of the 22 editorial staff will be based in London, Monocle will have single-person bureaux in New York, Zurich and Tokyo. It will go on sale in most European, Asian and North American countries.

Brule said the initial circulationtargetwas60,000to 70,000, but he thought there wasamarketforbetween 200,000and250,000bythe third year.