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November 25, 2024

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COMMENTARY / World

Mar 29, 2001

Reform out of reach for Kim Dae Jung

By Ronald Meinardus

SEOUL -- Some weeks ago, I attended an academic conference that attempted a critical evaluation of the performance of administration of South Korea President Kim Dae Jung three years after its inception. I sat on a panel with probably the most prominent liberal political scientist in South Korea today,...

COMMENTARY

Mar 29, 2001

Time to act is running out

By Tom Plate

The captain of a sinking cruise ship was trying to persuade his male passengers to let women and children board the lifeboats first. But he quickly learned he'd have to customize his pitch according to the nationalities on board. The Englishmen were easy; the captain simply appealed to their sense of...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 28, 2001

Australians try to sort good economic news from bad

By Alan Goodall

SYDNEY -- With the government of Prime Minister John Howard still reeling from a by-election humiliation, along comes a morale booster -- a corporate deal that makes Australia the dominant player in global-resources trade. Comeback Kid Howard has done it again, although his chances of staying prime minister...

COMMENTARY

Mar 28, 2001

Understanding 'leadership' in Japan

By Glen S. Fukushima

An American scholar who recently proposed writing a book about leadership in Japan was told by his colleagues, "A book? You'll be lucky to find enough material to write a chapter, or more likely a newspaper article, on the subject!"

COMMENTARY

Mar 27, 2001

The limits of public opinion

By Hugh Cortazzi

LONDON -- Speaking to the House of Commons on Nov. 11, 1947, Winston Churchill said, "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Mar 26, 2001

Russians living 'la vida loca'

By Constantine Pleshakov

This semester I am teaching a Dostoevsky course. Implausible plots, stumbling dialogues, everybody in love with everybody, romantic triangles overlap like mating frogs, passions mount, money changes hands and is thrown into the fire -- the normal Dostoevsky stuff.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Mar 26, 2001

Never say you've apologized too much

By Hiroaki Sato

When Ursula Smith, my publisher friend up in Vermont, wrote to say, "I can't close without offering some (futile) form of apology, as one national to another, for that unfortunate accident off Hawaii," I said there was no need to apologize to me. It was an accident, and I wasn't too clear about the meaning...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 26, 2001

Bush's crash course in global diplomacy

By Brad Glosserman

U.S. President George W. Bush has just concluded a crash course in Northeast Asian politics. In the past three weeks, he has hosted South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen. Now Bush has to make sense of those visits, digest the various messages...

COMMENTARY

Mar 26, 2001

Too little too late for reform?

By Yukio Suzuki

In a dramatic policy reversal, the Bank of Japan has shifted its priority from cutting interest rates to expanding the money supply. The shift involves changing the key target for monetary adjustment from uncollateralized call-money rates to private banks' demand-deposit balances in the central bank....

COMMENTARY

Mar 25, 2001

Campaign-finance reforms stifle free speech

By Doug Bandow

WASHINGTON -- In opening the U.S. Senate debate on campaign-finance reform, Republican John McCain asked his colleagues to "take a risk for our country." But his proposals would stifle, not expand, political debate in America. Congress should instead relax election controls, thereby encouraging more...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 25, 2001

East Pakistan's bloody death, 30 years on

By Harvey Stockwin

HONG KONG -- Tonight marks the 30th anniversary of the beginning of one of the most traumatic Asian events in recent times: the blood-soaked birth of Bangladesh. Bangladeshi voices will be raised to remind the world of what was an enormous crime against humanity. But they may not tell the full story....

COMMENTARY

Mar 24, 2001

Let the deal-making begin

By Kenzo Uchida

Japanese politics is in a bizarre state of limbo. Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori on March 10 expressed his apparent intention to resign, when he said the governing Liberal Democratic Party's presidential election should be advanced from September, when they are originally scheduled. No date so far has been...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

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

The celebrated artist ‘updating’ the kimono

The celebrated artist ‘updating’ the kimono

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