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November 27, 2024

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EDITORIALS

Feb 28, 2002

Reform initiative faces setback

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi faces mounting difficulties as he tries to keep his reform initiative alive. His problem, in a nutshell, is that events are overtaking him. The gap between rhetoric and reality is widening amid growing signs of deflation. His favorite slogan, "structural reforms with...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Feb 28, 2002

Salt Lake City Games spark Gold War

By Constantine Pleshakov

MOSCOW -- Moscow is furious, Russia indignant. President Vladimir Putin frowns, the Russian Parliament wails. The people would be burning American flags in the streets if they could get some. The hotheads are already talking about boycotting McDonald's and "The Lord of the Rings." The nation feels humiliated...

EDITORIALS

Feb 27, 2002

New IOC regime's shaky start

The new president of the International Olympic Committee, Mr. Jacques Rogge, no doubt spent some sleepless nights in his bed in the athletes' village at Salt Lake City. It was his first Olympics since taking over from Mr. Juan Antonio Samaranch, and Mr. Rogge had made an extraordinary decision to stay...

COMMENTARY

Feb 27, 2002

Australia: a 'lucky' country no longer

By Gregory Clark

The debate over Canberra's handling of several thousand Afghan and other boat people from Indonesia claiming to be political refugees says a lot about Australia. Holding the refugees in barbed-wire desert camps or dumping them on remote Pacific Islands may have upset the rest of the world, but in Australia...

COMMENTARY

Feb 27, 2002

Beware the axis of hubris

By Doug Bandow

WASHINGTON -- As U.S. President George W. Bush wandered across Northeast Asia, it appeared that he thought it was 1942, not 2002. He seemed to believe that the world was engaged in a twilight struggle between good and evil, and only overwhelming American military involvement everywhere could prevent...

EDITORIALS

Feb 26, 2002

Constitutional reform debate low-key

The parliamentary debate on constitutional reform is making little headway two years after it formally began in both Houses of the Diet. The Constitutional Research Committee, created in both Houses in 2000 to make a comprehensive review of the national charter, is expected to submit a report in 2005....

COMMENTARY

Feb 26, 2002

Bush's policies give allies reason to worry

By Kiroku Hanai

U.S. President George W. Bush's "axis of evil" statement in his State of the Union message has worried not only the European Union but also America's Asian allies, particularly Japan and South Korea. South Korean President Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine policy" toward North Korea is now in danger of collapsing,...

EDITORIALS

Feb 25, 2002

Reviewing ODA for Central Asia

Central Asia has occupied an important position in Japan's official development assistance for the past several years. In fact, our nation is the largest aid donor to the region. With the situation there changing dramatically in the wake of the antiterror war in Afghanistan, now is an opportune time...

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 25, 2002

Help the huddled masses

By Ramesh Thakur

To Canberra's continuing irritation, the scandal of the Norwegian freighter Tampa will not go away. It now turns out that the Australian government's election victory last year may have been conceived in deceit and born in sin.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Feb 25, 2002

Memoir sheds light on Chinese atrocity

By Hiroaki Sato

NEW YORK -- My businessman friend Michio Hamaji, whose avowed mission is to improve international understanding, recently brought me a Japanese book titled "Charz." He told me it's a childhood memoir describing a Chinese atrocity in the late 1940s. If translated into English and published in the United...

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 25, 2002

Rarefied democracy of the Arab world

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON -- Bahrain produces little news of interest to the rest of the world, but now something remarkable has happened there. On Feb. 14, Emir Sheik Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa declared that Bahrain will henceforth be a democracy where he will reign only as a constitutional monarch. If he keeps his promise,...

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 25, 2002

Flawed theory, leadership thwart recovery

By Christopher Lingle

For many, the inability of Japan's economy to recover remains a mystery. This inability to assess the situation arises from misjudgments concerning the nature of the malaise and can be traced to the application of faulty economic theory.

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

The celebrated artist ‘updating’ the kimono

The celebrated artist ‘updating’ the kimono

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