Hiroaki Sato - The Japan Times

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Hiroaki Sato

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Hiroaki Sato

A Japan Times columnist since 2000, Hiroaki Sato has won prizes for his translation of poetry (PEN American Center, Japan-US Friendship Commission). A paperback edition of his "Legends of the Samurai" has recently appeared. He is now working on a second collection of samurai tales with their origins.

COMMENTARY / Japan / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Jun 24, 2013

Going with the flow in the trade office for Japan

There are some things to say as one leaves the New York office of Japan's JETRO, having worked amid the ebb and flow of trade for 44 years.

COMMENTARY / Japan / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

May 27, 2013

The transient rasping that captivates the poets

Do cicadas create a shrieking hell? Are they ugly? There is a striking difference between English and Japanese Wikipedia entries on these transient insects.

COMMENTARY / World / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Apr 29, 2013

Photos of carnage would check war sentiment

Would most Americans remain indifferent to the wars their government wages in far-off lands if their media broadcast videos each day of the shattered bodies?

COMMENTARY / Japan / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Mar 25, 2013

It's not skin color, it's every way you're different

What should a Japanese expat say to a mixed-race couple in New York who wonder how their children would be treated if they raised them in Japan?

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

Mar 24, 2013

Alterations of idealized beauty in China, Japan

THE SEARCH FOR THE BEAUTIFUL WOMAN: A Cultural History of Japanese and Chinese Beauty, by Cho Kyo (Zhang Jing), translated by Kyoko Selden. Rowman & Littlefield, 2012, 287 pp., $49.95 (hardcover)

COMMENTARY / Japan / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Feb 25, 2013

Endless effects of 'pacification' wars

Unnecessary U.S. wars in the Middle East have unintended consequences at home just as Japan's war against China still casts its shadows to this day.

COMMENTARY / World / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Jan 28, 2013

West never tires of the 'burden' of baiting Iran

Is The New York Times inciting a U.S. war against Iran? As it did the war against Iraq?

JAPAN

Jan 25, 2013

Noted scholar Kyoko Iriye Selden dies in U.S.

Kyoko Iriye Selden, a scholar and teacher at Cornell University, died in Ithaca, New York, on Sunday at the age of 76 after contracting pneumonia.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Dec 31, 2012

Supreme copout: twisted justification for guns

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Nov 26, 2012

Punchy party names hark back to ignominy

So, Shintaro Ishihara, who had abruptly quit the Tokyo governorship in October, set up a political party named Taiyo no To, then merged it with Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto's political party that doesn't sound like one, Nippon Ishin no Kai. Another political party that doesn't sound like one, Tachiagare...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Oct 29, 2012

Evidence of the Showa Emperor's deep regret

Checking the galley of the endnotes to "Persona," my biography of Yukio Mishima with Naoki Inose, I decided to augment a note on Japan's monarchical system. The tenno institution had a singular meaning for Mishima, and I set aside substantial space in the book for the subject.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Sep 24, 2012

An ominously familiar Japanese contemporary

Things do sometimes go backward.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Aug 27, 2012

Shifting views on the role of the Emancipator

Gore Vidal, who died at the end of July, was one writer whose essays I began to read years ago. I then moved on to his novels, though I saw one of his more famous Broadway plays, "The Best Man," only recently for the first time.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Jul 30, 2012

U.S. has turned the tables on its old Declaration

On Independence Day (July 4), The New York Times printed the Declaration of Independence, as it had done — the daily noted in an article on the preceding day — for 90 years, since 1922.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Jun 25, 2012

Irony of being in the company of '12-year-olds'

In going over my manuscript of the Yukio Mishima biography, my copy editor protested at one point, citing her "liberal Berkeley-influenced sensibilities." That was where I described Japan as a "backward nation." Let me explain.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

May 28, 2012

Unmachinable, unreformable, but necessary

One recent topic for The Wall Street Journal's front-page space set aside for stories other than the daily shenanigans of business, politics and wars was the community in Florida created for retired letter carriers. ("In Florida, These Retirees Deliver a First-Class Protest," March 27.)

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Apr 30, 2012

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the sakura

Until The New York Times pointed it out earlier this month, I had failed to notice, alas, that Tokyo had given cherry trees to this city as it did to Washington, D.C., 100 years ago ("Gifts From Japan, Less Celebrated in Manhattan," April 12).

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Mar 26, 2012

Costs of a policy of profligacy with foreign lives

In the early hours of March 11, Sunday, a U.S. soldier went on a rampage in a village in Panjway, southwest of Kandahar, Afghanistan. He went from one mud house to another, shot, stabbed, and burned 16 villagers. Or so it has been reported.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Feb 27, 2012

American safety tab in terms of drone deaths

Sometimes people make a startlingly mindless argument. One recent example is "Drones for Human Rights" (New York Times, Jan. 31).

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Jan 30, 2012

Aggression born of American 'exceptionalism'

I thought American exceptionalism was debunked and dying. I was wrong.

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Japan’s summer music festivals are feeling the heat in more ways than one

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The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'

By Tomoko Otake

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