Economy
Fed to start tapering bond purchases this year: Bernanke
The Federal Reserve maintains its $85 billion-a-month asset purchase program, but says it could begin scaling back later this year.
Commentary | THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK Apr 4, 2010
70 times safer than the roads themselves
by Hiroaki Sato
NEW YORK — The Toyota saga, though quiet for the moment, will continue. “Lawyers Vie for Lead Roles in Toyota Lawsuits,” said a headline in The Wall Street Journal (March 15). The company’s “legal bill for unintended-acceleration cases will be in the billions,” predicted ...
Commentary | THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK Feb 28, 2010
Three LatAm capitals and the Tokyo of 1964
by Hiroaki Sato
NEW YORK — While visiting three capitals in Latin America on a lecture tour earlier this month, I wondered if Tokyo looked or felt like any of these cities to someone visiting it from New York or a large European city half a century ...
Commentary | THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK Jan 31, 2010
Dysfunctional hairs of a vaunted democracy
by Hiroaki Sato
NEW YORK — Three recent developments in a span of two days reminded me how dysfunctional and uncivil America’s vaunted democracy has become. First, there were images of Massachusetts voters wildly cheering Scott Brown. He had just won a special election for a U.S. ...
Commentary | THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK Dec 27, 2009
Usual conformist cliches about the Japanese
by Hiroaki Sato
NEW YORK — So Roger Cohen, a relatively new columnist with The New York Times, concluded after a brief stay in Tokyo earlier this month that Japan is a society laid low by “a tremendous conformity” and trivialized by “otaku” (“Japanese Obsessions,” Dec. 14). ...
Commentary | THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK Nov 29, 2009
The warring mind-sets on U.S. immigration
by Hiroaki Sato
NEW YORK — Over dinner with a consultant friend recently, our conversation drifted to U.S. immigration when she said, “I’m worried about our future.” We did not go any further on the subject, but the late-afternoon news flash had said the Obama administration would ...
Commentary | THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK Oct 24, 2009
Standing army still the prize peace-breaker
by Hiroaki Sato
NEW YORK — The news that President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize immediately brought to mind comparisons with former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who received the same prize back in 1973. In the outpourings of sharply divided reactions that ...
Commentary | THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK Sep 27, 2009
Hatoyama just calling it as it is
by Hiroaki Sato
NEW YORK — I was startled to receive a letter from a friend in Tokyo earlier this month accompanied by a Sankei Shimbun article by Yukio Okamoto sharply upbraiding Yukio Hatoyama. The then next prime minister’s sin was to let The New York Times ...
Commentary | THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK Aug 30, 2009
Media connivance in walking the dogs of war
by Hiroaki Sato
NEW YORK — For five days following Japan’s surrender this month in 1945, the Mainichi Shimbun, by then reduced to a single sheet because of severe paper shortages, published editions with a good deal of blank space: on Aug. 16, Page 2 totally blank; ...
Commentary | THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK Jul 26, 2009
Blunderbuss followup to the invasion of Iraq
by Hiroaki Sato
NEW YORK — The New York Times editorial on June 30, “The First Deadline,” showed America’s egocentrism at its worst. Dealing entirely with a single subject — the withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraqi cities, with 130,000 soldiers still remaining in the country ...
Commentary | THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK Jun 28, 2009
Mythmaking and the Kamikaze 'volunteers'
by Hiroaki Sato
NEW YORK — Lisa Hosokawa Garber, a fresh graduate of St. Andrews Presbyterian College in North Carolina, has sent me “Crosswind,” her short, imaginative account of three months in the life of a youth training to be a Kamikaze pilot. It describes what its ...
Commentary | THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK May 31, 2009
Japan's wartime sentiment toward China
by Hiroaki Sato
NEW YORK — What were the Japanese saying when their country plunged into a war in 1937 that would last eight years and end in utter defeat? The question came to mind when I stumbled on “Showa 12 Nen no ‘Shukan Bunshun’ “ (Bungei ...
Commentary | THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK Apr 26, 2009
Recalling 'the fall of the Yasuda Auditorium' and the end of Japan's student movement
by Hiroaki Sato
At a friend’s Easter Sunday dinner party, I asked, “What do you think the student movement of the ’60s in the U.S. accomplished?” One guest answered, “Obama’s election.” Unexpected but true: in this country, the opposition to the Vietnam war went hand in hand ...