More Opinion Articles - The Japan Times

November 30, 2024

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COMMENTARY

Aug 25, 2003

Japan's global security role

By Keizo Nabeshima

The most important feature of Japan's latest white paper on defense is that it gives new direction to the nation's defense policy. First, the report emphasizes that developing a missile defense system is a "matter of urgent importance for defense policy."

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 25, 2003

New Zealand struggles to stay nuclear-free

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

MADRAS, India -- One of the first things that strikes a visitor to New Zealand are the innumerable signboards that proudly proclaim the small Pacific island country to be nuclear-free. Even the common man on the streets of Wellington or Christchurch or Auckland will tell you New Zealand fiercely protects...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Aug 25, 2003

Humanity takes a bite out of Mother Earth

By Hiroaki Sato

SUNSET BEACH, North Carolina -- Sunset Beach is a summer resort town that appears to have achieved its full-blown status only about a dozen years or so ago, just about the time we started spending our two-week vacation in the beach house of our poet friend Grace Gibson. Photos taken when she built the...

EDITORIALS

Aug 25, 2003

In plainer language, please

Over the past two weeks, a new type of computer virus known as Blaster and its variants have attacked hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide, including in Japan. These viruses are different from those previously discovered. They expand rapidly across the Internet without any human intervention,...

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 25, 2003

Encouraging signs from the Chinese world

By George Sioris

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- If one focuses on the totality of the Chinese world, there have been several positive signs recently. With international media attention generally fragmented, it perhaps would be worthwhile to try to compile a synthesis of what we have witnessed lately.

COMMENTARY

Aug 24, 2003

China, U.S. now share a sense of crisis

By Kenzo Uchida

For the past few years, I have been going to Hawaii every summer to stand atop Diamond Head and speculate on the historic destinies of the United States and China, the two superpowers facing each other across the Pacific, and Japan, which is sandwiched between them.

EDITORIALS

Aug 24, 2003

Revisiting the Enola Gay

Fifty-eight years ago this month, a U.S. aircrew dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima from a lumbering B-29 that had been nicknamed Enola Gay in honor of the pilot's mother. Eight years ago, the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington mounted an exhibit of the...

COMMENTARY

Aug 24, 2003

Beijing betting that a better economy will calm restless Hong Kong democrats

By Frank Ching

HONG KONG -- China's strategy for dealing with the political situation in Hong Kong in the aftermath of the massive rallies last month -- when more than half a million people took to the streets -- is two-pronged: On one hand, Beijing is waging a massive economic campaign to prop up the Hong Kong economy....

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 24, 2003

Japan again risking too little, too late

By Yuki Tatsumi

Last month Japan passed legislation that opened the door to sending the Self-Defense Forces on missions to Iraq. In principle, this was a very positive step forward for those who had hoped to see Japan play a greater role in international security affairs.

COMMENTARY

Aug 24, 2003

Looking for a few bad men

By Sarah Benton

LONDON -- Will Prime Minister Tony Blair's government fall as a result of the inquiry being led by Lord Hutton into the apparent suicide of weapons expert Dr. David Kelly? Unlikely.

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 23, 2003

Bringing Alberto Fujimori to justice

By W. Bradnee Chambers

Alberto Fujimori, Radovan Karadzic, Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush and Tony Blair all share a common, though dubious, distinction. All these heads or former heads of state have been charged with crimes against humanity.

COMMENTARY

Aug 23, 2003

Pawns for Tokyo's hardliners

By Gregory Clark

Japan seems bound forever to want to embark on quixotic foreign-policy campaigns. Yesterday it was Tokyo's bizarre Northern Territories demands against Moscow. Today it is its equally bizarre abductee demands against Pyongyang.

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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