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COMMENTARY
Jan 26, 2010

Fault lines in the Sino-Indian frontier dispute

"Quand la chine s'reveillera, le monde tremblera" (When China wakes, the world will tremble), Napoleon said while in exile at St. Helena.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Jan 25, 2010

Japan could pay big price for hurting American pride

Fifty years after the current Japan-U.S. security treaty took effect, 2010 looks to be a watershed year for the bilateral relationship between Japan and the United States.
Reader Mail
Jan 24, 2010

Future size of JAL flight crews

I've been reading with interest the process by which Japan Airlines (which filed for bankruptcy protection last week) will be rehabilitated. In a news article this month, specific recommendations included introducing a budget airline that would fly from certain sites in and out of Japan.
Reader Mail
Jan 24, 2010

Japan needs foreign wakeup call

Regarding the Jan. 16 article by Lakhdar Brahimi and Desmond Tutu, "Hope and peril for Sudan": The situation in Sudan reminds me of the political and economic situation in Japan. First, our political leaders have neither a strategic vision nor immediate ideas for making Japan a competitive and thriving...
Reader Mail
Jan 24, 2010

Would foreign vote hurt governor?

Regarding the Jan. 20 article "Ueda against letting foreigners vote": I assume that Saitama Gov. Kiyoshi Ueda and others gladly accept the tax contributions made by foreign permanent residents — but not their right to participate in local elections.
LIFE
Jan 24, 2010

Chipping away at constitutional freedoms

Just as for the United States, the cost to Japan of the Iraq adventure has not been limited to the financial. A series of test cases against antiwar activists has dismayed lawyers and human-rights activists, who say the post-9/11 Japanese state is attacking constitutional freedoms.
Reader Mail
Jan 21, 2010

Grateful for right to proselytize

In his Jan. 17 article, "Will the Tiger find a way out of the Woods?," columnist Tom Plate finds commentator Brit Hume's statement on American television that Christianity might offer a public figure (such as golfer Tiger Woods) a greater opportunity for repentance to be not only virtually unconstitutional...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 21, 2010

Paying CEOs too much is bad for business

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — There is now intense debate about how the pay levels of top executives compare with the compensation given to rank-and-file employees. But, while such comparisons are important, the distribution of pay among top executives also deserves close attention.
COMMENTARY
Jan 19, 2010

Military spending — for what?

WASHINGTON — The United States dominates the globe militarily. The threats facing America pale compared to its capabilities. Why, then, is Washington spending so much on the military?
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Jan 18, 2010

Ex-minister making waves

Former Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Yoichi Masuzoe, who had lain low for some time, resumed his political activities in earnest late last year. Political observers now wonder what his ultimate aims are: Does he seek to create a political party of his own?
Reader Mail
Jan 17, 2010

Retire the foreign player limit

Regarding the Jan. 8 article "NPB, MLB commissioners to discuss prospect of true World Series": At the start of the 2009 Major League Baseball season, there were 229 foreign-born players on team rosters, comprising 28 percent of all players. Thus, MLB teams, with their collection of so many of the best...
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Jan 17, 2010

Guilty by ballot, Japan-U.S. security treaty signed, gang war feared

75 YEARS AGO
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 15, 2010

Islam's place in politics

BEPPU, Oita Prefecture — The dynamics of Islam and politics in Indonesia are always worth following. Conventional wisdom says that moderates rule the game. In reality, this is not always true.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 12, 2010

Wannabe comics find their voices in Tokyo

"Everyone likes a laugh now and then, right?"
COMMENTARY
Jan 11, 2010

Incredible shrinking media

SEATTLE — As you flip through a range of channels on your TV or browse through a stack of newspapers and magazines at a newsstand, you may feel lucky to live in a world where such a plethora of viewpoints is available. It might also seem that the apparent increase in media choices also increases the...
Reader Mail
Jan 10, 2010

China using leverage to beat West

Regarding Brahma Chellaney's Jan. 6 article, "China wants it both ways": It saddens people like me of Indian descent to see people like Chellaney write as if they were clinging to feelings of "brown-man inferiority" long after the fall of colonialism and the decline of the British Empire.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 10, 2010

Kremlin two-step: modernize or marginalize

MOSCOW — Westerners often see Russian politics in terms of a high-level struggle between liberals and conservatives: Ligachev and Yakovlev under Mikhail Gorbachev; reformers and nationalists under Boris Yeltsin; siloviki and economic liberals under Vladimir Putin.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 9, 2010

Europe's latest revolution

STOCKHOLM — History often moves with small steps, but such steps sometimes turn out to have big implications.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jan 5, 2010

Minors in own category but never above the law

Jan. 11 marks Coming of Age Day, an annual holiday to celebrate people who have reached legal adulthood.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jan 3, 2010

A world beyond the United States now beckons Japanese youth

'Shying away from study in America" screamed the front-page headline of the Dec. 11 evening edition of the Asahi Shimbun. The article beneath presented facts and analysis of an unmistakable phenomenon: Japanese students are not being drawn to the United States to pursue their studies as they once were....
Reader Mail
Dec 31, 2009

Memories of Okinawa in the '60s

I found Jon Mitchell's Dec. 27 Timeout article, "Koza remembered," rather one-sided. I had the pleasure of being in Okinawa on many occasions between 1962 and 1969 as a young U.S. Air Force noncommissioned officer. I was struck more by the anti-Japan sentiment of the Ryukyuan natives than by any prejudice...
Reader Mail
Dec 31, 2009

One big difference is in renting

I couldn't help but laugh at Michiko Goff's Dec. 27 letter, "Act intelligently to make friends." She complains about discrimination in the United States without giving a single specific example, then proceeds to tell foreigners in Japan that any discrimination against them is not real — that Japanese...
Reader Mail
Dec 31, 2009

Keynesian road is the wrong one

A better title for Gregory Clark's Dec. 28 article, "(Japan's) Economy chasing its tail," is "Strike 3! You're out!" Follow Clark's suggestions and Japan will be headed to the historical dugout. Japan needs to strip itself of its institutional straitjacket. The current set of economic institutions creates...
COMMENTARY
Dec 28, 2009

Economy chasing its tail

The Japanese have a saying — "sandome no shoujiki." Roughly translated it means that "after getting it wrong twice you finally get it right the third time."
Reader Mail
Dec 27, 2009

Land mine status quo disheartening

Who would be the eager attackers if all land mines were to vanish overnight? That's the question I had on reading Jody Williams' Dec. 5 article (from the Los Angeles Times), "Obama continues shameful land mine policy." Civilians continue to be maimed and killed by them, while China, India, Pakistan,...
Reader Mail
Dec 27, 2009

Japan may get what it wishes for

Regarding Masahiro Matsumura's Dec. 16 article, "What does Japan want from Washington?": If the United States starts a war with Iran — which is highly likely — it will be overburdened by wars in the Middle East for at least the next two decades and therefore unlikely to be able to defend any allies...
Reader Mail
Dec 27, 2009

India can't compare with China

Regarding Dominique Moisi's Dec. 22 article, "Recognizing confident India as indispensable": "G3" with India? You have got to be kidding! I mean you only have to look at cities like Beijing and Shanghai, or Xian, Chengdu and Dalian. Mumbai and Delhi are simply incomparable to them.

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?