More Commentary Articles - The Japan Times

November 27, 2024

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COMMENTARY

Dec 4, 2002

The high price of Saudi oil

By Doug Bandow

WASHINGTON -- The U.S.-Saudi relationship is again engulfed in controversy. Did a Saudi princess, and wife of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, give money to two of the 9/11 hijackers? Yet again, both governments are paying a high price for their unnatural friendship.

COMMENTARY

Dec 4, 2002

Japan slams the door on stolen artwork

By Brad Glosserman

HONOLULU -- Stolen art is big business. According to Interpol, the traffic in stolen art is worth about $5 billion a year, about as much as the illegal trade in arms and drugs. Accurate estimates of the trade are hard to come by, but this figure is almost certainly low. After all, how does one value...

COMMENTARY

Dec 3, 2002

Japan must do its part in war

By Keizo Nabeshima

The Japanese government, acting under a special antiterrorism law, decided Nov. 19 to extend Japan's logistic support for U.S. forces for six months through next May. The decision calls for dispatching a transport ship and an escort destroyer to deliver heavy machinery from Thailand to Qatar for airfield...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 3, 2002

Deserter would likely face court-martial

By Richard Halloran

HONOLULU -- Amid the swirl of diplomatic maneuvering among the United States, Japan, South Korea and North Korea stands the strange case of Sgt. Charles Robert Jenkins, who is accused of having deserted from the U.S. Army in South Korea in 1965 to defect to North Korea.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 2, 2002

Bridging North-South gap

By Ramesh Thakur

During the Cold War, the contours of the U.N. agenda were shaped by East-West and North-South fault lines. While the East-West divide disappeared with the Berlin Wall, the North-South divide continues to plague the organization, undermining its relevance at times. There is evidence of a recent relaxation...

COMMENTARY

Dec 2, 2002

A 'liberal' disposition for creating wealth

By Ronald Meinardus

MANILA -- Often I begin workshops or classes dealing with liberalism by asking participants to share their definition of that political concept by jotting catchwords on little cards that are then collected and pinned to a moderation board. Not only is this method, as I have come to learn, highly participatory,...

COMMENTARY / JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL ERA

Dec 2, 2002

Women's creativity waiting to be tapped

By Jean-pierre Lehmann

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- Several months ago, I mentioned I would be addressing the gender question in a future article. I received several letters urging me to do so. A couple of correspondents, however, argued that the question of women is a purely domestic affair and not relevant to the theme of "Japan...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 2, 2002

China has robbed Keio University, Japan's Foreign Ministry of their independence

By Alexander K. Young

NEW YORK -- Japan has been in an uproar since five of its citizens who were abducted by North Korean agents more than 20 years ago were allowed to return home Oct. 15. But an even more ominous event for the country, though not prominently reported by the mass media, occurred last month: the "kidnapping"...

COMMENTARY

Dec 1, 2002

Strange public works allergy

By Gregory Clark

Sunday saw the opening of the long-delayed Morioka-Hachinohe extension of the Tohoku Shinkansen (Northeast Japan bullet-train line). Local people will be happy. But don't expect great outbursts of joy elsewhere. Japan is into one of its periodic antipublic works moods.

COMMENTARY

Dec 1, 2002

Accusations put Pakistan on defensive

By Farhan Bokhari

ISLAMABAD -- Weeks of adverse publicity surrounding the alleged exchange of Pakistan's nuclear knowhow for North Korea's missile technology has a familiar ring for South Asia's second-largest country. Many of the latest allegations have emerged from American newspaper sources. Although U.S. Secretary...

COMMENTARY

Nov 30, 2002

West Coast optimists say the sun also rises

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES -- Sometimes the only explanation for it is that there are two Americas. The East Coast America, with its dark cynicism and worldly seen-it-all sangfroid, sees Asia as mostly a problem and a threat. But West Coast America, soaking up its proximity to Asia and reveling in local Asian ethnicities...

COMMENTARY

Nov 30, 2002

Opposition, come out please

By Hugh Cortazzi

LONDON -- Parliamentary institutions in Britain and Japan currently have one thing in common -- they lack an effective and credible opposition. The absence of opposition can allow governments with large majorities to ignore public opinion, at least in the short term, and behave in an autocratic way,...

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.

Japan’s sauna movement: Relax, refresh, repeat

By Greg Dvorak

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

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

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

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