More Commentary Articles - The Japan Times

November 27, 2024

Today's print edition

Subscribe for more access

COMMENTARY

Oct 28, 2002

Just don't call him Senior Minister Jiang

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES -- Extreme conservatives would have you simply bomb 'em; extreme liberals would simply have you love 'em. Real life, though, often comes down to a difficult choice between questionable alternatives. And when the issue relates to how to relate to more than a 1.3 billion people, perhaps the...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 28, 2002

Poverty and poor health go hand in hand

By Cesar Chelala and Manuel Pena

NEW YORK -- Poverty cannot be defined solely in terms of lack of income. A person, a family, even a nation is not deemed poor only because of low economic resources. Little or no access to health services, lack of access to safe water, illiteracy or low educational level and a distorted perception of...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 27, 2002

War talk doesn't faze Tatar oil people

By Russell Working

KAZAN, Russia -- The Tatar Autonomous Republic is an area where minarets rise above the whitewashed kremlin walls, where Muslim villagers have pitched in to construct more than 1,000 mosques over the decade since the Soviet Union fell apart.

COMMENTARY

Oct 27, 2002

Russia's new nuclear threat

By Brad Glosserman

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia -- Hundreds of nuclear submarines float quietly at their berths throughout the Russian Federation. The end of the Cold War has not ended the threat posed by these sleek gray killing machines. Today, however, concern focuses on the environmental risks created by the decommissioning...

COMMENTARY

Oct 26, 2002

Bali crisis energizes Indonesian democracy

By Harvey Stockwin

HONG KONG -- The Bali bombing atrocity demonstrated, in a profoundly tragic fashion, how a politically weak, poorly organized, yet struggling democracy like Indonesia is intensely vulnerable to the forces of extremism and terrorism.

COMMENTARY

Oct 26, 2002

Sino-Indian war still haunts New Delhi

By Brahma Chellaney

NEW DELHI -- Forty years after China humbled India in a two-front Himalayan war masterminded by Chinese leader Mao Zedong, the lessons of that crushing defeat still reverberate in New Delhi. The war was Mao's attempt to demolish India as an alternative democratic model and geopolitical rival to communist...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 24, 2002

'Tax evaders' steal the talk of Shanghai

By David Wall

SEOUL -- A little over a month ago I was on the way to Shanghai to spend a month teaching at Fudan University. I read an article in a Hong Kong newspaper that said the topic on everyone's lips in China was the upcoming 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. This is the congress at which...

COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE

Oct 24, 2002

The final gasps of the 'do nothing' 107th Congress

By Bob Keefe

WASHINGTON -- It isn't much of a surprise that the 107th Congress is ending without much of a record of accomplishment. It had a spurt of success in its early months, passing President George W. Bush's mammoth tax cut and pushing through a respectable education program, but little has been accomplished...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 24, 2002

Securing consensus on Iraq

By John Barry Kotch

SEOUL -- As the U.N. Security Council debate on Iraq moves forward, precedent is pertinent. For Korea a half-century ago, it took three Security Council resolutions to authorize and organize an armed U.N. response; for Kuwait in 1990, more than a "baker's dozen."

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 22, 2002

North Korea's last gambit

By Victor D. Cha

WASHINGTON -- North Korea's surprise announcement of a secret nuclear-weapons program has thrown cold water on a recent warming of relations with South Korea and Japan that included family reunions, rejuvenated economic cooperation and, in particular, a stunning admission of past misdeeds against Japanese...

COMMENTARY / JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL ERA

Oct 21, 2002

Contributing to the spread of democracy

By Jean-pierre Lehmann

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- In a recent editorial, the Financial Times admonished the European Union and its member states, "(for) having consistently failed to grasp the broad historic significance of the fall of the Berlin Wall nearly 13 years ago." It is in fact an awesome event, the significance of...

COMMENTARY

Oct 21, 2002

Keeping faith with the U.S.

By Keizo Nabeshima

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi plans to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum to be held in Mexico later this month. Koizumi sets great store on Japan-U.S. friendship. In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in September,...

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’

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER

international-reports