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COMMENTARY
Dec 3, 2002

Japan must do its part in war

The Japanese government, acting under a special antiterrorism law, decided Nov. 19 to extend Japan's logistic support for U.S. forces for six months through next May. The decision calls for dispatching a transport ship and an escort destroyer to deliver heavy machinery from Thailand to Qatar for airfield...
COMMENTARY / JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL ERA
Dec 2, 2002

Women's creativity waiting to be tapped

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- Several months ago, I mentioned I would be addressing the gender question in a future article. I received several letters urging me to do so. A couple of correspondents, however, argued that the question of women is a purely domestic affair and not relevant to the theme of "Japan...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 26, 2002

Danger of inaction deepening: writers

If a frog is placed in a bucket of hot water, it will immediately sense the danger and jump out. If the same frog is placed in a bucket of cold water that is gradually heated, it will not realize the danger until it is too late. Today, a group of financial journalists from Britain agreed, Japan is that...
EDITORIALS
Oct 22, 2002

A disappointing policy speech

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's policy speech to the Diet last Friday can be summed up in a word: disappointing. It was disappointing particularly because he failed to explain in plain language how he intends to prevent a dangerous economic downturn. People know first hand that things are getting...
EDITORIALS
Oct 19, 2002

Stunning news from North Korea

The world has puzzled over the significance of the almost complete news blackout that followed the visit of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly to North Korea earlier this month. Now we know the reason: North Korea admitted that it had a nuclear weapons development program, a violation of the...
COMMENTARY
Oct 14, 2002

Testing times for Koizumi

Japanese politics is entering a crucial period. On Sept. 30, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi reshuffled his Cabinet for the first time since taking office in April 2001. The reshuffle, however, was limited in scale. Moreover, he kept his party's executive lineup unchanged.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 7, 2002

EU needs a common purpose

LONDON -- Since the original European Common Market was founded in the mid-1950s, the Continent sought a common economic role, to be followed by growing political integration. Now, there is general agreement on the first count that a new institutional framework is needed to give the community more political...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 12, 2002

Kashmir polls could be step to dialogue

Elections to the Kashmir Assembly will be held from Sept. 16 to Oct. 8. The million-dollar question is, will they be meaningful and bring about peace in a state that has been a bone of contention since 1947, when the British colonial masters divided the subcontinent into India and Pakistan before leaving?...
EDITORIALS
Aug 19, 2002

Candidates without real differences

Nagano Prefecture, whose assembly ousted a dam-decrying governor in a no-confidence vote last month, is set to elect a new leader on Sept. 1. Campaigning started officially on Thursday with six candidates in the running, including former Gov. Yasuo Tanaka. The other five candidates are new faces with...
EDITORIALS
Jul 27, 2002

Some key questions skirted

Seventeen years ago, following the Lockheed payoff scandal that culminated in the arrest and indictment of former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, the Diet set up an ethics council in both chambers. In an eerie flashback to that episode, the Lower House ethics panel on Wednesday grilled former Foreign Minister...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 25, 2002

Debunking strange myths about Asia, Part I

In 1980, I traveled through the United States just after the TV miniseries "Shogun" ended its run. Any time I mentioned to someone that I was living in Japan, he or she would invariably ask me one of two questions related to the program. One was, "Is it true that back then a samurai could chop off somebody's...
EDITORIALS
Jul 24, 2002

It's now or never

The Foreign Ministry, its public image badly tarnished by a string of corruption scandals and policy blunders, is set to work out an action plan to clean up its act. The plan will be based more or less on the recommendations submitted on Monday to Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi by her advisory panel....
EDITORIALS
Jul 9, 2002

A maverick among conservatives

In the hotly contested Nagano gubernatorial election held in October 2000, uncommitted voters gave a smashing victory to Mr. Yasuo Tanaka, a popular writer who is vehemently opposed to dam construction. On Friday, in a politically and emotionally charged climax to the running dispute between the governor...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 27, 2002

Labour spinning backward

LONDON -- When its press becomes the story, a country is in a strange shape.
EDITORIALS
Jun 26, 2002

Salvaging the truth

It has been six months since an unidentified armed vessel, presumably a spy ship from North Korea, sank in the East China Sea off Amami Island, Kagoshima Prefecture, following a gun battle with Japan Coast Guard patrol boats. An operation to salvage the ship finally began on Tuesday.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jun 13, 2002

Getting your just rewards for a lifetime of slog

Well here we are again. It's starting to get nice and hot and summer is well on us. Your questions and inquiries are coming in and we are also getting answers and ideas from our readers too. Great. That is just what we were hoping for.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 28, 2002

America's own 'rogue state'

BEIRUT -- Since the Taliban's defeat in Afghanistan, the United States has been focusing on that long-standing "rogue state" and newly anointed member of the "axis of evil," President Saddam Hussein's Iraq, as the next target of its "war on terror."
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 25, 2002

Time to engage, not bully, North Korea

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Since January 2001, relations between Pyongyang and Seoul have been tense. The various confidence-building measures agreed to at the summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung in June 2000 came to a halt after newly elected U.S. President...
JAPAN
Apr 8, 2002

Asian issues carry much weight on global stability

NAGO, Okinawa Pref. -- There were times when relations between the European Union and Japan suffered from having a narrow focus, centered on economic matters.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Apr 8, 2002

Japan has golden chance for revival

Improved corporate governance at Japanese firms coupled with better public policy can "lead to a magnificent revival" in the country's economy, according to James K. Glassman, who delivered the 2002-'03 Mansfield American-Pacific Lecture, jointly sponsored by Keizai Koho Center.
EDITORIALS
Mar 13, 2002

An inconclusive testimony

Diet testimony given Monday by Liberal Democratic Party legislator Muneo Suzuki proved to be inconclusive. It failed to lift the heavy cloud of doubt hanging over his alleged abuse of power. The central question -- how he used his political clout to favor his friends in government and business -- was...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 13, 2002

In the nihongo words of the Bard . . .

Kazuko Matsuoka is the Shakespeare translator whose work directors and actors in Japan most like to use. A 59-year-old Tokyo resident, she is the translator appointed for the Saitama Arts Theater's project of staging Shakespeare's complete works. To date, she has translated 11 of the plays, and is now...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 10, 2002

Can common sense penetrate the food market?

You don't have to be paranoid to conclude that the recent series of food-labeling scandals represents the tip of the iceberg. With the Japanese market continually opening itself wider to food imports, and the government still unable or unwilling to untangle the tight, complicated interrelationships that...
EDITORIALS
Mar 7, 2002

Put paid to graft

The arrest Monday of Tokushima Prefecture Gov. Toshio Endo on bribery charges is a reminder that an old habit -- using political influence for monetary gain -- dies hard. Tokyo prosecutors say he received 8 million yen from a Tokyo-based consultancy for the role he had played in securing a public works...
BUSINESS / ON MANAGEMENT
Feb 26, 2002

Avoiding strikeouts when you decide who to promote

When it comes to success rate, business shares at least one thing with baseball -- you tend to strike out a lot more than you get on base.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 20, 2002

When the personal reveals the political

YANAIHARA TADAO AND JAPANESE COLONIAL POLICY, by Susan C. Townsend. Richmond, Surrey, U.K.: Curzon Press, 2000, 360 pp., 50 British pounds (cloth) Recent years have witnessed a new wave of scholarly works in English on Japan's colonial past. Monographs and edited volumes by Mark Peattie, Peter Duus,...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 20, 2002

Redefining the role of education in Japan

THE JAPANESE MODEL OF SCHOOLING: Comparisons with the United States, by Ryoko Tsuneyoshi. New York and London: Routledge Falmer, 2001, 219 pp., $80 (cloth) What role should schools play? Should they reflect the existing social order, or should they be active agents that set a course for social transformation?...
COMMENTARY / JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL ERA
Jan 14, 2002

Still hurtling down the nationalist track

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- In early 1997 I was hosting a reception at a Geneva hotel following a workshop on trade issues when a Japanese official took me aside. Looking at me conspiratorially, he whispered, "Professor Lehmann, I have an important question to ask you: How long do you think it will be before...
EDITORIALS
Nov 24, 2001

Find the mad-cow infection route

The specter of mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) continues to haunt the nation despite official assurances of safety. On Wednesday another cow tested positive at a meat inspection center in Hokkaido, even as the source of infection in the first case, confirmed in September in Chiba Prefecture,...

Longform

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