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November 21, 2024
 

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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 / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
May 30, 2010
Does democracy still count if it's conditional?
NEW YORK — With Barack Obama's military policy in the Middle East getting murkier by the day, his predecessor George W. Bush's stated goal of democratizing the region through violence has to be judged to have failed. The thought prompts the reflection that forced democratization could entail considerable...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Apr 25, 2010
Results of carnal prohibition are no surprise
When the Vatican "scandal" erupted, I happened to be reading Kumagusu Minakata's writings on homosexuality — to be exact, his writings as selected, with comments, by Taruho Inagaki. I was doing so because Inagaki (1900-1977) won Japan's literary "grand prize" for his book, "The Aesthetic of the Love...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Apr 4, 2010
70 times safer than the roads themselves
NEW YORK — The Toyota saga, though quiet for the moment, will continue. "Lawyers Vie for Lead Roles in Toyota Lawsuits," said a headline in The Wall Street Journal (March 15). The company's "legal bill for unintended-acceleration cases will be in the billions," predicted Jeremy Anwyl of Edmunds.com,...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Feb 28, 2010
Three LatAm capitals and the Tokyo of 1964
NEW YORK — While visiting three capitals in Latin America on a lecture tour earlier this month, I wondered if Tokyo looked or felt like any of these cities to someone visiting it from New York or a large European city half a century ago.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jan 31, 2010
Dysfunctional hairs of a vaunted democracy
NEW YORK — Three recent developments in a span of two days reminded me how dysfunctional and uncivil America's vaunted democracy has become.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Dec 27, 2009
Usual conformist cliches about the Japanese
NEW YORK — So Roger Cohen, a relatively new columnist with The New York Times, concluded after a brief stay in Tokyo earlier this month that Japan is a society laid low by "a tremendous conformity" and trivialized by "otaku" ("Japanese Obsessions," Dec. 14).
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Nov 29, 2009
The warring mind-sets on U.S. immigration
NEW YORK — Over dinner with a consultant friend recently, our conversation drifted to U.S. immigration when she said, "I'm worried about our future."
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Oct 24, 2009
Standing army still the prize peace-breaker
NEW YORK — The news that President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize immediately brought to mind comparisons with former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who received the same prize back in 1973. In the outpourings of sharply divided reactions that ensued, a great many, it turned...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Sep 27, 2009
Hatoyama just calling it as it is
NEW YORK — I was startled to receive a letter from a friend in Tokyo earlier this month accompanied by a Sankei Shimbun article by Yukio Okamoto sharply upbraiding Yukio Hatoyama.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Aug 30, 2009
Media connivance in walking the dogs of war
NEW YORK — For five days following Japan's surrender this month in 1945, the Mainichi Shimbun, by then reduced to a single sheet because of severe paper shortages, published editions with a good deal of blank space: on Aug. 16, Page 2 totally blank; on the 17th, not just Page 2 but also a third of...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 9, 2009
Contention over the tenno system
This collection of 14 essays by 12 scholars, ranging from academic, journalistic, speculative, to advisory, makes an excellent introduction to the scope of arguments presently made about tenno, Japan's "emperors."
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jul 26, 2009
Blunderbuss followup to the invasion of Iraq
NEW YORK — The New York Times editorial on June 30, "The First Deadline," showed America's egocentrism at its worst. Dealing entirely with a single subject — the withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraqi cities, with 130,000 soldiers still remaining in the country — the lengthy commentary...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jun 28, 2009
Mythmaking and the Kamikaze 'volunteers'
NEW YORK — Lisa Hosokawa Garber, a fresh graduate of St. Andrews Presbyterian College in North Carolina, has sent me "Crosswind," her short, imaginative account of three months in the life of a youth training to be a Kamikaze pilot. It describes what its author calls a Shakespearean "twist of fate":...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
May 31, 2009
Japan's wartime sentiment toward China
NEW YORK — What were the Japanese saying when their country plunged into a war in 1937 that would last eight years and end in utter defeat?
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Apr 26, 2009
Recalling 'the fall of the Yasuda Auditorium' and the end of Japan's student movement
At a friend's Easter Sunday dinner party, I asked, "What do you think the student movement of the '60s in the U.S. accomplished?" One guest answered, "Obama's election." Unexpected but true: in this country, the opposition to the Vietnam war went hand in hand with the movement that culminated, in federal...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 5, 2009
Looking at history: the argument for facts over theory
Positivism in historiography means an emphasis on facts over theory, documentary evidence over deductions from premises. It may also be called "nitty-gritticism," George Akita suggests in "Evaluating Evidence," a book that recounts the author's dealing with primary sources and the problems he has come...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Mar 29, 2009
Hold the SOS call on the Japanese language
Will the Japanese language die, crushed by the onslaught of English? This question has set off some heated talk in Japan recently because of a book suggesting that it may. First, a friend of mine in Tokyo, a member of a small reading club, told me about it. Then another friend wrote to say the book became...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Mar 1, 2009
What 'prohibition' has wrought
NEW YORK — When I read the news that the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy "blasted the U.S.-led drug war as a failure that is pushing Latin American societies to the breaking point" (Wall Street Journal, Feb. 12), I thought: Someone is finally talking sense. I have long regarded the...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jan 25, 2009
Repercussions of war gone bad
NEW YORK — A young friend of mine, Rie Nakano, who did some archival research for a university professor, has given me a small batch of documents prepared by the Special Higher Police, known by the Japanese acronym Tokko. (I had told Rie that my father was an officer of the dreaded "thought police.")...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Dec 29, 2008
Suppressing more than free speech
I recently read a book that, a decade ago, created a controversy in Japan about homosexuality. In it the prize-winning writer Jiro Fukushima described his sexual relationship with Yukio Mishima dating from 1951.
Ishiba delays meeting with Trump, citing legal restrictions
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba waves upon arrival for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, in Callao, Peru, on Friday.
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Rising sex tourism exposes loopholes in Japan's anti-prostitution law
While financial misfortunes during the COVID-19 pandemic may have driven some women to work the streets, others simply want more money to spend — or want to pay off their debts — at host clubs.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
Ruling coalition and DPP strike last-minute deal over economic policy
DPP policy chief Makoto Mahaguchi speaks at the party's policy gathering in Tokyo on Wednesday.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.
Japanese expats in Asia find community through rugby
The Taiwan Fivewoods celebrate their victory at the 2023 Asian Japanese Rugby Cup in December of last year.
In Fukushima, a weekend of prose, poetry and translation
Aomori-based writer JJ Carter presented on tabletop gaming as creative inspiration for building characters and narratives.
For Dr. Nakamats, aging is just experience in action
Though he didn't win the recent gubernatorial election in Tokyo, the 96-year-old Dr. Nakamats' run was seen as inspirational in Japan's aging society.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?
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