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 Hugh Cortazzi

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Hugh Cortazzi
Hugh Cortazzi was posted to British Commonwealth Air Forces in Japan in 1946, and he joined the British Foreign (later diplomatic) service in 1949. After retiring, he worked in the city of London and was an adviser to a number of Japanese companies. He was chairman of the council of the Japan Society from 1985-1995. Since 1983 he has researched and written a number of books about Japanese culture and history and has edited and compiled a series of books on personalities active in Anglo-Japanese relations.
COMMENTARY
Jul 27, 2007
Scripting the exit from Iraq
LONDON — Prospects for Iraq and its people are gloomy. Responsibility for that rests partly with Saddam Hussein and his evil regime, but also with the Americans and their allies for botching the aftermath of the March 2003 invasion.
COMMENTARY
Jul 18, 2007
The terrorists in our midst
LONDON — The terrorists who committed the atrocities in London on July 7, 2005, seemed to have been of limited education and from relatively poor backgrounds. The four terrorists who were convicted recently of plotting mass murder on the London transport system on July 21, 2005, were refugees from...
COMMENTARY
Jun 30, 2007
Britain's future tied to Europe
LONDON — The recent European summit in Brussels reached a compromise on a treaty that would replace the proposed European constitution rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 10, 2007
Japan and Germany: worlds apart and yet so similar
CULTURE AND POWER IN GERMANY AND JAPAN: The Spirit of Renewal, by Nils-Johan Jorgensen. Global Oriental, 318 pp., 2006, £50 (cloth) The author of this interesting and thought-provoking study was a Norwegian diplomat who served in both Germany and Japan. He acquired a good knowledge of both countries...
COMMENTARY
Jun 8, 2007
Vanity in spinning a legacy
LONDON — Leaders of the summit countries have been changing. Gerhard Schroeder, the German Social Democratic chancellor of Germany, was the first to go. His replacement, Angela Merkel, is a Christian Democrat but leading a coalition with the Social Democrats.
COMMENTARY
May 31, 2007
Handling a truculent Russia
LONDON — Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer who had denounced corruption in the FSB, the successor to the KGB, is thought to have been murdered in London last November. His death was particularly horrific as he died after prolonged suffering as a result of ingesting liquid polonium, a dangerous...
COMMENTARY
May 10, 2007
Who benefits from M&A?
LONDON — Mergers and acquisitions have been much in the news in the last few weeks. These have raised some controversial issues. One of these concerns the role of private equity. Another is that of cross-border mergers.
COMMENTARY
Apr 16, 2007
Preserving the countryside
LONDON -- In Britain we have not yet quite lost the battle to preserve the countryside, but it is far from won. In Japan, however, it looks to many outsiders as if preservation is a lost cause.
COMMENTARY
Mar 27, 2007
A Japanese sense of humor?
Japanese and Germans are thought by some "Anglo-Saxons" to have many similar qualities, including a lack of a sense of humor and a tendency to take themselves too seriously. I don't think the former is fair; the latter is closer to the mark.
COMMENTARY
Mar 19, 2007
British crime and punishment
LONDON -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair, on assuming office in 1997, said his government would be tough on crime and its causes. Although police numbers have increased with police pay, the proportion of reported crimes that have been solved has not shown significant improvement. Filling out bureaucratic...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 11, 2007
Searching for responsibility in starting and losing a war
Who Was Responsible? From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor, edited by James E. Auer, The Yomiuri Shimbun, 2006, 410 pp., 4,000 yen (cloth) Yomiuri journalists worked for 14 months investigating: "Who was responsible for starting the Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War, why they did so and why the...
COMMENTARY
Feb 27, 2007
The legacy of failing to learn
LONDON -- Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he will resign later this year. U.S. President George W. Bush's second term ends at the end of next year. These two may not have more vanity than other politicians, but in their final months they seem to be giving more thought than usual to their historical...
COMMENTARY
Jan 18, 2007
Unhappy state of education
LONDON -- Very few parents in Britain or Japan are happy about the state of education available to their children. The response of politicians in both countries to these concerns is inadequate and sometimes dangerous.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 7, 2007
How one merchant ship doomed a colony
Mrs Ferguson's Tea-Set, Japan, and The Second World War: The Global Consequences Following Germany's Sinking of The SS Automedon in 1940, by Eiji Seki. Global Oriental, 187 pp., 2007, £35 (cloth) On her way to Penang on Nov. 11, 1940, the Blue Funnel Line merchant vessel SS Automedon was sunk by the...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 17, 2006
Getting the best view of Japan's history
JAPAN AND THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS: Complete Record of Reported Events 1853-1899, compiled and introduced by Terry Bennett. Global Oriental, 2006, 411 pp., with illustrations, £125 (cloth). The Illustrated London News was among the first journals to carry illustrations of contemporary events. The...
COMMENTARY
Dec 7, 2006
Work harder to promote Japan abroad
LONDON -- In his Sept. 29 policy speech, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stressed that he wanted to construct "an open economy full of vitality."
COMMENTARY
Nov 24, 2006
Breaking the trade impasse
LONDON -- Gordon Brown, the British chancellor of the exchequer and likely successor to Prime Minister Tony Blair, has declared publicly his strong support for a successful conclusion to the Doha round of world trade negotiations. He has called for new mechanisms to break the global logjam on trade and...
COMMENTARY
Oct 26, 2006
Revisionists damaging Japan
LONDON -- Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has the reputation of being a tough nationalist. So far, however, he has shown himself to be a pragmatist in foreign-policy issues. His early visits to China and South Korea demonstrated that he wants to improve bilateral relations, which have soured in recent years....
COMMENTARY
Oct 12, 2006
Great problems and promise
LONDON -- The huge growth in Chinese gross domestic product and the market represented by a population 10 times that of Japan present huge opportunities for potential trade and investment. But these tend to obscure the problems that policies pursued by the present regime in China pose to the rest of...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 10, 2006
Out of the well, but into the fire
FROG IN THE WELL: Portraits of Japan by Watanabe Kazan 1793-1841, by Donald Keene. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, 290 pp., including endnotes, bibliography, index and 38 color illustrations, £24.50 (cloth). Watanabe Kazan is not nearly as well known in Western countries as his contemporary...

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