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August 15, 2024
 

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Kevin Rafferty
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 16, 2009
Involve, don't attack, China
HONG KONG — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on her maiden overseas trip has a golden opportunity to show that the new administration of Barack Obama understands and is prepared to make its best efforts to put America's most important bilateral relationship on a surer footing. I'm not talking...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 18, 2009
Obama among the Lilliputians
HONG KONG — Tuesday will be an historic day when Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th U.S. president. He is not only the first African-American president to hold the highest office, but his swearing in is also a triumph of the Great American Dream.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 28, 2008
Hope for Thai democracy
HONG KONG — Abhisit Vejjajiva seems the least likely person to rescue Thailand from what commentators claim are the death throes of democracy. He is boyish-looking, physically slight, has no commanding military or police connections, no reputation for wheeling and dealing, and was foreign born and...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 9, 2008
Benefiting from a dream market
HONG KONG — As the world economy reels from bad to worse, and economists go from talking of recession to swapping stories of the Great Depression of the 1930s, eyes turn to China and to what it might, can and should do in its newly emerging role as a global player both economically and politically....
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 5, 2008
Terror threat to civilization
...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 26, 2008
Too much for the Earth to bear
HONG KONG — The global financial crisis that has sent economies teetering from recession toward slump is preoccupying politicians and families worldwide, who see their livelihoods being snatched away by the consequences of the inventive greed of financial whiz kids.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 14, 2008
Oddball summit has limits
HONG KONG — It is the best of times because leaders from developed and developing countries have gathered in one place, Washington, to try to rebuild a broken global system, and China and India are at last at the top table.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 8, 2008
American dream triumphs
HONG KONG — Congratulations to President-elect Barack Obama and to the people of the United States of America, some of whom lined up for five hours to vote, for their stunning victory. Bill Bennett, a former Republican Cabinet secretary under Ronald Reagan, commented that "the country has grown up."...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 29, 2008
Time to rescue Chris Patten
HONG KONG — His hair has turned white, but his voice is as mellifluous as ever and his wit just as eloquent and rapier-quick in puncturing balloons of self-importance and pomposity. It was a real delight to watch him in a BBC Hardtalk discussion on the economic crisis as he pricked pretentious statements...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 3, 2008
Singh rises above the fray to keep fighting
HONG KONG — It was hardly the finest hour for Indian democracy, but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh finally called the bluff of his so-called leftist allies last month and won a vote of confidence in Parliament after two days of stormy debate and widespread allegations of bribery and corruption.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 20, 2008
Can Hu ease up to enjoy the world's wishes?
HONG KONG — With a little unexpected help from people who would not normally be considered its friends, China has recently taken important strides to improve regional relations and become a global political as well as economic player.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 1, 2008
Fukuda's heart for G8 leadership
This fragile earth of about 6.5 billion souls faces grave and unprecedented challenges: soaring prices of oil and basic commodities that fuel daily life; price increases that make staple foods like rice and wheat too expensive for millions of poor people; a savage profusion of natural and man-made disasters...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 23, 2008
The global food crisis: It's time to empower the world's have-nots
HONG KONG, (AP) The Times of London ran a cartoon offering its "solution" to the world food crisis as leaders gathered for their recent Rome summit: It showed Pope Benedict XVI holding a cross in his left hand and a packet of "extra safe" condoms in his right.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 7, 2008
Hot air over global warming
HONG KONG — Fresh reports every day tell of glaciers melting, thinning polar ice triggering prospects of a scramble for the riches under the Arctic ice cap, worries about rising water levels inundating low-lying countries, and soaring oil prices.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 30, 2008
A failure to influence Bush
HONG KONG — Five years after the toppling of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the United States has precious little to show for its $3 trillion war, except for more than 4,000 American military dead (1,000 more than perished in the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11), 150,000 Iraqis killed, 1.5 million...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 10, 2008
The international community is betraying Afghanistan
HONG KONG — It is a magnificent land, a high plateau, landlocked, bitterly windswept and freezing in winter; sweltering, parched and dry in summer. It has a proud stiff-necked people who reflect the tough climate, rugged, stubborn, fiercely tribal, traditionally loyal but with a tenaciously vicious...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 26, 2008
Scary signs in BOJ debacle
HONG KONG — Even Google couldn't believe it. Asked to supply its best information about Koji Tanami, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's second "best available" candidate to be governor of the Bank of Japan (BOJ), the search engine instantly responded, "Do you mean Bank of Japan tsunami?"
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 28, 2008
Why's Japan grown so ugly?
YUNOMINE, Wakayama Pref. — My brother wanted to create a new room in the loft of his house in an English provincial city, actually Kingston upon Hull (population 250,000), a place of passing interest to Japanese because two centuries ago it was one of the world's biggest whaling ports. Today, the whales...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 17, 2008
Max Hastings' analysis in a bombshell
NEMESIS: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45, by Max Hastings. HarperPress, 2007, £25, 699 pp., (cloth). (U.S. release is titled RETRIBUTION: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45. Knopf, 2008, $35) At Frankfurt airport, the insecurity police screening hand baggage discovered something in my bag that alarmed them....
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 11, 2008
Wise man from Japan now the black pope
...
Japan to revise consumption tax exemption for overseas tourists
Tourists walk through Nakamise shopping street near Sensoji Temple in Tokyo in April
Japan's tourism industry hit by cancellations after megaquake alert
A beach closed due to a megaquake alert in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, from Friday to Thursday.
Focus shifts to incoming typhoon as Tropical Storm Maria dissipates
Newly formed Tropical Storm Ampil, which is forecast to approach eastern Japan this weekend, is seen on the left side of this satellite image.
Kishida to step down in September in bid to show ‘LDP has changed’
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks during a news conference Wednesday at the Prime Minister's Office in Tokyo.
Publisher finds surprise audience after translating history textbooks
Yamakawa Shuppansha president Takeshi Nozawa holds the publisher's textbook on Japanese history — used in high schools across Japan — alongside the new English version in Tokyo on May 23.
Economic security is about strengthening and sustaining growth, former minister says
Former economic security minister Takayuki Kobayashi says changes in the international balance of power, along with deepening economic interdependence, have led some countries to attempt to use their economic power to impose their will on others.
Ice bandanas, convenience store breaks: Running under Japan’s summer sun
Blistering heat is becoming a fixture of summer in Japan, but a few tweaks to your routine can make your outdoor runs bearable — if not enjoyable — until cooler temperatures return.
Japan issued its first-ever megaquake alert. What does that mean?
Naoshi Hirata (center), chairman of a committee tasked with evaluating the risk of a Nankai Trough earthquake, speaks at a news conference in Tokyo on Friday.
France brings down the curtain on its Olympic party with Tom Cruise and Leon Marchand
Fireworks are set off during the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics at Stade de France in Saint-Denis on Sunday.
Japan fuels U.S. LNG boom even as climate targets and impacts loom
Flaring at the Cameron LNG export terminal in Hackberry, Louisiana. Flaring, a common sight at LNG plants, is a controlled burning of gas for reasons ranging from depressurizing equipment to disposing of gas that can’t be used. The practice is a "waste of money" and negatively impacts climate change and human health, says the International Energy Agency.

Podcast

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

Longform

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.
In search of the ‘Japanese dream’
By Thu-Huong Ha

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’
Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

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