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November 25, 2024

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EDITORIALS

Dec 5, 2000

A ticket to ride -- at what price?

As of this week, long-suffering passengers on Japan's crowded local train lines are still awaiting a satisfactory explanation, rather than an excuse, for why they were overcharged if they followed the posted fare tables. In some cases, the overcharging has continued for more than three years. The reasons...

EDITORIALS

Dec 4, 2000

Prepare for bumps ahead

The U.S. economy is slowing down and that could mean trouble for the rest of the world. The United States has acted as consumer of last resort for many of the world's exporters. As the U.S. economic expansion brakes, those countries will have to find other markets for their goods or risk a slowdown of...

COMMENTARY

Dec 4, 2000

Kosovo's meaning for Japan

By Ralph Cossa

NATO's campaign against Yugoslavia last year was illegal but legitimate. This was a conclusion at a recent conference on the "Implications of the Kosovo Conflict on International Law," sponsored by the Institute for International Policy Studies in Tokyo. It was illegal because it did not have United...

COMMENTARY

Dec 4, 2000

Turning a blind eye to Chinese proliferation

By Brahma Chellaney

NEW DELHI -- It speaks volumes that just when the United States determined that China was engaged in clandestine missile trade with Pakistan and, to a lesser extent, Iran, Washington announced that it was waiving a law requiring imposition of economic sanctions in such a situation. The unmistakable message...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Dec 4, 2000

Judging history's 'single most violent act'

By Hiroaki Sato

At a midtown bar, Wolcott Wheeler, whom I call a historian without portfolio, tells me a story about Robert Oppenheimer: how the physicist, meeting President Harry Truman in the Oval Office, said, "Mr. President, I have blood on my hands."

COMMENTARY

Dec 4, 2000

Fight the spread of small arms

By Keizo Nabeshima

The United Nations General Assembly has decided to hold the U.N. Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Aspects in New York in July 2001. The trade involves a broad range of hand-carried arms from automatic rifles to portable missiles.

EDITORIALS

Dec 3, 2000

The incarnation of Hal

Just under half a biblical lifetime ago -- 32 years, to be exact -- the computer Hal was introduced to the world in the movie and novel "2001: A Space Odyssey." Offspring of the fertile brain of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Hal came to embody the world's collective hopes and fears concerning artificial intelligence....

EDITORIALS

Dec 3, 2000

Handsome is as handsome does

What would we do without social scientists? Creeping about with their clipboards and calculators, they are forever coming up with solemn, statistic-studded pronouncements about things so obvious we were practically born knowing them. And yet there is something satisfying about having our assorted prejudices...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 3, 2000

Middle-class myth comes tumbling down

By Roger Pulvers

This is the eighth of a 10-part series on contemporary Japan.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 3, 2000

Korean democracy suffers growing pains

By Ronald Meinardus

SEOUL -- You don't have to consult opinion polls to understand that in general terms South Koreans are not happy with their government. It is enough to occasionally read editorials or to engage in political discussions with Korean friends, colleagues and neighbors. Then you detect a very basic disenchantment...

COMMENTARY

Dec 3, 2000

Britons going nowhere fast

By Sarah Benton

LONDON -- Is Britain in crisis? Many people think so, after a month in which large swathes of England have been inundated by filthy flood water. Television news showed comic snippets of boats in the streets rescuing old ladies and dogs, snaps of sturdy men and women counting their blessings as the flood...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 3, 2000

2002 World Cup: Soccer without fear?

By Glyn Ford

BRUSSELS -- The first world cup of the new millennium is to be staged in Japan and South Korea in the summer of 2002. Both countries want to use this billion-dollar sporting showpiece as a global shop window allowing those watching, both in the stadiums and on TV, to see the real Japan and the real South...

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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