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COMMENTARY / World

Oct 30, 2005

Gun control loses yet again

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON -- Last Sunday in Brazil, a country with the second-highest rate of gun deaths on the planet, almost two-thirds of Brazilians voted against a total ban on the sale of firearms. Explain that.

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Oct 30, 2005

What lies beneath the myth of middle-class consciousness

By Roger Pulvers

A friend sent me an email about some new people, all Japanese, she had met at a party. There was a young man who had worked in Africa for Medecins Sans Frontieres. One middle-age man had quit a stable job in broadcasting to study French in Paris. A female graduate student in marine biology was also there....

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 28, 2005

Diabetes: Asia's silent killer

By Paul Zimmet

You could be forgiven for thinking communicable illnesses, like HIV/AIDS, and the newly feared bird flu, are the major disease threats for Asia in the next and coming decades.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 27, 2005

Arduous birth of democracy

By Daisaku Ikeda

The democratization of a further third of the world's countries during the second half of the 20th century was a remarkable and inspiring achievement. At the start of the 21st century, however, the difficulties inherent in exporting democracy have become starkly apparent.

COMMENTARY

Oct 26, 2005

A Koizumi promise not worth keeping

By Brad Glosserman

HONOLULU -- Last week, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made his fifth visit to Yasukuni Shrine. There was the predictable response from other Asian nations, but it is clear that those protests fall on deaf ears. If the prime minister's determination is plain, so too are the consequences, and they have...

COMMENTARY

Oct 24, 2005

How clear is Japan's future?

By Hugh Cortazzi

The editors of three leading British journals (The Times, The Financial Times and The Economist) have recently visited Japan and reported positively on Japan's economic prospects. They noted that Japan had largely recovered from "the lost decade." The Economist was bullish, heading its recent supplement...

COMMENTARY

Oct 24, 2005

Tired of military presence

By Kiroku Hanai

As expected, U.S. base-relocation plans in Japan -- part of the U.S. strategy of global troop realignment -- are facing difficulties. Americans living near military bases at home may be opposed to cutbacks for fear of losing jobs, but people in Japan, an island country one-twenty-fifth the size of the...

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Oct 23, 2005

Best to dig deep and study language from its roots

By Roger Pulvers

W hen I was growing up in Los Angeles during the 1950s, the L.A. County Board of Education decided that the children of the city should learn Spanish. While the language was not made compulsory, it was taught to us regularly with the usual visual aids, such as pictures of elephants, giraffes, mountains...

COMMENTARY

Oct 23, 2005

Look for change next year

By Gregory Clark

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's determination to visit Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni Shrine needs to be seen in the perspective. The visit was not necessarily, as Beijing and Seoul seem to believe, a final proof of prime-ministerial evil.

COMMENTARY

Oct 22, 2005

How not to manage U.S.-Singapore ties

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES -- Perhaps the last thing that the well-run city-state of Singapore needs is for some outside columnist to defend it. Among the many natural-born rhetorical defenses available on this amazing island is the redoubtable Lee Kuan Yew. Even at 82, the founding prime minister of modern Singapore...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 22, 2005

Sex inequality slows growth

By Cesar Chelala

NEW YORK -- A growing number of countries have adopted population and development policies to meet the health-care and education needs of women, including their reproductive health needs. In spite of that, gender inequality persists in most countries around the world. According to the United Nations...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 20, 2005

Panic over bird flu isn't wholly misplaced

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON -- It would be funny if it were not so serious. As migratory birds carry the avian influenza virus west across Europe, Britain is following in the footsteps of Russia, Ukraine, Romania and Turkey and asking hunters to shoot down as many incoming ducks and geese as possible. They have been issued...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.

Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.

By Tomoko Otake

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