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November 22, 2024
 

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Jonathan Fenby
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 30, 2003
Iraqi crisis highlights strains in trans-Atlantic relations
LONDON -- Since the end of World War II, Western Europe has usually sided with the United States in global conflicts. Except for a few national exceptions, such as France's criticism of the Vietnam War, trans-Atlantic solidarity has been the order of the day from the Cuban missile crisis through the...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 16, 2003
Berlin-Paris partnership faces challenges as EU grows larger
LONDON -- Forty years ago this month, President Charles de Gaulle of France and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of West Germany signed a historic agreement to consecrate the end of 75 years of conflict between their two nations. The Franco-German Friendship Treaty came six years after the establishment of...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 8, 2003
Debate suffers as ruling parties dominate
LONDON -- The shape of politics is changing in the world's main democracies in a manner that Japan may find familiar. But the implications are only starting to seep through.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 29, 2002
NATO mission remains foggy
LONDON -- The invitations issued at the recent Prague conference to seven former Eastern Bloc states to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are a dramatic demonstration of how the world has changed in just a few short years.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 19, 2002
Protectionism threatens global economy
LONDON -- Japan's current row with China over steel exports is symptomatic of a growing retreat from the free trade aims that underpinned international growth in the last two decades of the 20th century. It is now a year since members of the World Trade Organization set themselves the task of reducing...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 10, 2002
A wretched winter for Tories and royals
LONDON -- This is proving to a wretched winter for two of Britain's most hallowed institutions. The reasons say much about the way the country has changed -- and is changing.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 7, 2002
EU needs a common purpose
LONDON -- Since the original European Common Market was founded in the mid-1950s, the Continent sought a common economic role, to be followed by growing political integration. Now, there is general agreement on the first count that a new institutional framework is needed to give the community more political...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 22, 2002
France losing steam for radical reform
PARIS -- Three months ago, the French center-right scored two stunning electoral victories. As a result of miscalculations and voter apathy, the Socialists who had formed the government since 1997 crashed to defeat, and President Jacques Chirac was re-elected with 82 percent of the vote in a runoff ballot...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 10, 2002
Continental drift worries EU leaders
LONDON -- Ever since the end of World War II, Western Europe and the United States have felt like partners, sharing a wide range of common values and bound militarily by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance. There have, inevitably, been strains over the decades, and a need to re-assess the...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 27, 2002
Labour spinning backward
LONDON -- When its press becomes the story, a country is in a strange shape.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 24, 2002
Le Pen's shocking win shakes France to the core
PARIS -- France's presidential election system is meant to ensure both a maximum of democracy and the emergence of a strong national leadership at the end of the two rounds of voting. That was the model set by Gen. Charles de Gaulle when he established the Fifth Republic four decades ago.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 4, 2002
Tony Blair struggles to fill Margaret Thatcher's giant shoes
LONDON -- She has been out of power for a dozen years, but former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has remained a formidable political force while her contemporaries on the world scene have faded from view.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 28, 2002
Familiar faces fail to stir French voters
PARIS -- It could happen only in France. The president of the Republic is running for re-election as the opposition candidate while his main challenger is defending the government's record over the past five years.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 22, 2002
New strains of anti-Semitism
LONDON -- Sixty years after the Holocaust, is anti-Semitism spreading in Europe? The question is being asked increasingly in a number of countries, notably Britain, which fought the Nazis through World War II, and France, which lived for four years under a collaborationist regime that persecuted Jews...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 18, 2002
Will Blair err as Icarus did?
LONDON -- No European leader rode higher in the reaction to the Sept. 11 attack in New York than Tony Blair. The British prime minister immediately rallied to the American cause, enunciated the need to fight terrorism in ringing tones and committed troops to fight in Afghanistan. At last he had emerged...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 21, 2002
A rightist revival in Europe
LONDON -- For the past five years, the center-left has held the whip hand in Western Europe. Whether in the shape of Prime Minister Tony Blair's New Labour administration in Britain or the more traditionally leftwing Socialist-led government in France, social democracy has ruled in the major countries...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 3, 2002
Euro faces economic snags
LONDON -- The introduction on Jan. 1 of the euro currency into everyday use across 12 countries in one of the world's big three economic zones marks the accomplishment of a 50-year-old project to bring the continent together in partnership and mutual well-being as an alternative to the past periodic...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 6, 2001
Economies threaten credibility of euro
LONDON -- Ever since the common currency began to take shape in the mid-1990s, there has been a latent conflict between politicians in the euro zone and the guardians of the monetary stability pact in Frankfurt and Brussels. This autumn the politicians insist publicly that they stand four-square with...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 25, 2001
Scandals have Chirac on the defensive
LONDON -- August is the month when, traditionally, the French forget about the cares of everyday life as they head for long holidays at home or abroad. But, this year, the most eminent of them as had a far from relaxing time. Just nine months before he faces an uphill re-election battle, President Jacques...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 17, 2001
Macedonian crossfire threat
LONDON -- Ever since the Federation of Yugoslavia broke up a decade ago, the fate of the territories over which Marshal Tito ruled for most of the postwar period has provided not just an internal cycle of war and separation, but also a series of major challenges for the international community, in particular...
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.
Tokyo Metro’s overseas efforts begin in earnest with London deal
Tokyo Metro will soon have a role in the running of London's Elizabeth Line, a major train route serving the U.K.’s capital city and environs.
Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says
Ukrainian firefighters work on a spot following an airstrike in Dnipro on Thursday.
Ex-yokozuna Kitanofuji dies at 82
Yokozuna Kitanofuji enters the ring during the May 1970 grand sumo tournament in Tokyo.
Man charged with murder allegedly made victim date other men for money
A car carrying suspect Ryotaro Masuda, who was indicted for allegedly beating his 25-year-old girlfriend to death, leaves the Shibuya Police Station in Tokyo on Thursday.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
Around a quarter of Japan married couples in their 20s met through dating apps
A survey released by an organization promoting “Good Couples Day” shows that 24% of couples in their 20s met their marriage partner through a dating app.
'Tokyo Swindlers': Get deep into the minds of real estate con artists
In Ko Shinjo's "Tokyo Swindlers," a group of con artists manipulates real estate giants into falsified deals within the highly competitive, quick market.
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.

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?
By Kathryn Wortley

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

mission sustainability vol.12 : Kose Corp.Kose takes pride in creating beauty in the world
mission sustainability vol.12 : Kose Corp.Kose takes pride in creating beauty in the world

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