Politics & Diplomacy
Hashimoto to retract sex suggestion for U.S. military
Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto aims to retract his remark that U.S. servicemen in Okinawa should use the local adult entertainment industry to avoid committing sex crimes.
Commentary | COUNTERPOINT Sep 9, 2012
Putin's siege-mentality Russia now firmly in the grip of a 'cold civil war'
by Roger Pulvers
There is an old Soviet-era Russian joke about two rival groups of archeologists who cannot agree on the age of a mummy discovered in Central Asia. At their wits’ end, they call in the NKVD — the name of the dreaded KGB in Stalin’s ...
Commentary | COUNTERPOINT Sep 2, 2012
Prescient work of writer Sawako Ariyoshi begs for rediscovery
by Roger Pulvers
Aug. 30 marked the day, 28 years ago, that Japan and the world lost a writer of immense importance. Sawako Ariyoshi’s works of fiction and nonfiction took up many social issues that came into prominence in the years after her death. To my mind, ...
Commentary | COUNTERPOINT Aug 26, 2012
Should the public trust Japan's leaders when the 'big one' hits Tokyo?
by Roger Pulvers
No two calamities are alike, yet the needs of victims vary only in scale, not in kind. This is what occurred to me as I read Itoko Kitahara’s fascinating book, “Kanto Daishinsai no Shakaishi” (The Social History of the Great Kanto Earthquake), published last ...
Commentary | COUNTERPOINT Aug 19, 2012
Monster parents make matters worse for their children and teachers
by Roger Pulvers
In the West they hover and swoop. In Japan they stalk and are known to strike. We all have them and some of us have been them. And in recent years the media, both social and antisocial, have put them under the magnifying glass ...
Commentary | COUNTERPOINT Aug 12, 2012
New breed of single fathers should be a model for men across Japan
by Roger Pulvers
He is a much maligned creature at home and abroad. Some call him good for nothing; others say he is good for only one thing: bringing home the bacon … and, in recent years, a most lean bacon it has become. On the weekends ...
Commentary | COUNTERPOINT Aug 5, 2012
Japanese rice from Down Under forges new hope from historical links
by Roger Pulvers
“I think I can create a farming environment that can give hope to Fukushima farmers.” These are the words of Takemi Shirado, the driving force behind a unique enterprise. With its headquarters in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, less than 50 km from the stricken reactors ...
Commentary | COUNTERPOINT Jul 29, 2012
In our time of global aggression we could learn from the 'Land of Sorry'
by Roger Pulvers
Back in 1991, I was offered a tenured position at a university in Kyoto. Needless to say, this was a big step for me and my family, who were all looking forward to settling into Kyoto life. I went to the home of the ...
Commentary | COUNTERPOINT Jul 22, 2012
Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto: 'What Japan needs now is dictatorship'
by Roger Pulvers
Confrontational, outspoken, feisty and highly focused, Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto is a self-made man determined to redraw the loci of power in Japan. He is clearly using the local platform from which to spring into the national arena. The question on everyone’s mind is: ...
Commentary | COUNTERPOINT Jul 15, 2012
Shades of Meiji surround provincial Hashimoto's growing national profile
by Roger Pulvers
First of two parts Can Toru Hashimoto — the controversial and complex, outspoken and aggressive 43-year-old mayor of Osaka — ever be the prime minister of Japan? This week and next, in an attempt to answer that question, Counterpoint will put the photogenic Hashimoto’s ...
Commentary | COUNTERPOINT Jul 8, 2012
The sorry state of affairs in Japan is enough to turn WGs into FGs
by Roger Pulvers
Many years ago I coined a phrase — “Frozen Gaijin” — to describe a particular kind of foreigner living in Japan. A frozen gaijin can be recognized in an instant. The longer frozen gaijin stay in Japan, the rosier everything in their native country ...
Commentary | COUNTERPOINT Jul 1, 2012
Ryuichi Sakamoto reminds Japanese what's the score on nuclear blame
by Roger Pulvers
“Keeping silent after Fukushima is barbaric,” is how composer and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto recently made clear his proactive stance toward Japan’s ongoing nuclear disaster. With a stinging article in the June 15 edition of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, he has set out his opinions ...
Commentary | COUNTERPOINT Jun 24, 2012
Fumiko Hayashi: Haunted to the grave by her wartime 'flute and drums'
by Roger Pulvers
If you compare the treatment dealt out in the immediate postwar period to Japanese writers who supported their nation’s military aggression in World War II with that meted out to such writers in Europe, the Japanese literary collaborators seem to have got off lightly. ...