More Commentary Articles - The Japan Times

November 28, 2024

Today's print edition

Subscribe for more access

COMMENTARY

Aug 30, 2004

Cooler summer for French intramurals

By Andre Fontaine

PARIS -- "Chaotic all over the territory," warned a French weather forecast recently. This was not, however, the remake, feared by so many, of the August 2003 heat wave, which contributed to 15,000 extra deaths that month.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Aug 30, 2004

Fear of cultural decline: the next chapter

By Hiroaki Sato

NEW YORK -- Every August my wife Nancy and I leave New York to go south to spend two weeks at a friend's summer house at Sunset Beach, North Carolina. Driving leisurely, mainly so we can ride ferries on Delaware Bay and on Pamlico Sound, we stop for two nights on the way, usually lodging in Onley, Virginia,...

COMMENTARY

Aug 30, 2004

They came, they saw, they pillaged Asia

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES -- Financial authorities are aghast over the latest near-death international financial collision. It involved a lightening-fast dumping earlier this month of nearly $14 billion in securities. The perpetrator was Citigroup, operating out of London.

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 29, 2004

Golden efforts belie risk-averse image

By Adam S. Posen and Edward M. Graham

WASHINGTON -- A stereotype exists in the United States and elsewhere: Japanese are risk-avoiders while Americans are risk-takers.

COMMENTARY

Aug 29, 2004

Refighting the Medicare budget battle

By Doug Bandow

WASHINGTON -- Medicare, which offers health-care coverage for America's elderly, faces trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities. Unfortunately, legislators are constantly tempted to increase benefits and thus spending. They should resist their inner darkness as the Bush administration attempts to...

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 29, 2004

A refitted Security Council

By Ramesh Thakur

Everyone acknowledges the need for U.N. Security Council reform in theory. Unfortunately, they cannot agree on an one particular reform package. Once people see the details of a concrete proposal, losers and opponents always seem to outnumber winners and supporters. The urgency for reform is now extreme....

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 28, 2004

Halfway home is far from a China deal

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

MADRAS, India -- The Dalai Lama is still the leader of Tibet. He may be just a figurehead, but China, which annexed Tibet in 1959 and drove the Dalai Lama and his followers into India, knows that only this monk can convince his people to reconcile to Beijing's control over Lhasa.

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 27, 2004

Apathy sustains hunger toll

By John M. Powell

ROME -- Imagine for a moment the thousands of proud athletes from around the world that paraded through the Olympic Stadium in Athens during the spectacular opening ceremony last week. Now, imagine this: In the next 12 hours, hunger and malnutrition will take the lives of more men, women and children...

COMMENTARY

Aug 25, 2004

World faces another humanitarian crisis

By Hugh Cortazzi

LONDON -- While politicians and diplomats discuss what to do, many people of Sudan's Darfur region have been forced from their homes, terrorized, tortured and murdered by members of the armed Janjaweed Arab militia, who frequently rape the women they capture. The militia has apparently been aided and...

COMMENTARY

Aug 24, 2004

Dressing Japan for success

By Keizo Nabeshima

To play a positive role in the international community of the 21st century, Japan should lift its self-imposed ban on the exercise of the right to collective self-defense, reinvent itself as a political power and win a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, according to Yukio Satoh, president...

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 23, 2004

Africa's oil boom benefiting all too few

By Cesar Chelala

NEW YORK -- Since the mid-1990s, several countries in sub-Saharan Africa -- Nigeria, Angola, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea -- have experienced strong revenue growth from the petroleum industry. In most cases, this new wealth is not being directed toward the countries' economic development or toward improved...

COMMENTARY

Aug 23, 2004

Foreign workers at the gates

By Kiroku Hanai

negotiations with South Korea and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Japan faces mounting pressure to open its labor market to foreigners. Among industrial nations, Japan has maintained the toughest exclusion policy toward foreign workers and remains extremely cautious. Japan should...

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

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

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER

international-reports