Hiroaki Sato - The Japan Times

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Hiroaki Sato

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Hiroaki Sato

A Japan Times columnist since 2000, Hiroaki Sato has won prizes for his translation of poetry (PEN American Center, Japan-US Friendship Commission). A paperback edition of his "Legends of the Samurai" has recently appeared. He is now working on a second collection of samurai tales with their origins.

For Hiroaki Sato's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Nov 24, 2008

Burst of U.S. bubble arouses old specters

So the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has spoken: The "usual tools of economic policy — above all, the Federal Reserve's ability to pump up the economy by cutting interest rates — have lost all traction" ("Depression Economics Return," Nov. 14, The New York Times).

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Oct 27, 2008

Democratic pretension vs. airs of entitlement

NEW YORK — "I was honestly dumfounded," Akira Ueda recently wrote, "when I learned that the gold medalist judoka Satoshi Ishii told the Emperor, 'I fought for you, Your Majesty.' " Ishii made that statement when Olympic medalists and others were invited to tea at the Imperial Palace by the Emperor...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Sep 29, 2008

'Good old days' dispensed with body counts

NEW YORK — Driving back from Sunset Beach, North Carolina, where we spend two weeks every summer, we hugged the coastline. After crossing the 40-kilometer Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, we stopped for the first time at the Visitors Center for the Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge....

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Aug 25, 2008

The longest day ever for Japan

I recently stumbled upon a YouTube recording — actually, two — of the Showa Emperor telling his subjects over the radio that Japan was accepting defeat. The first one I heard was what appeared to be a cleaned-up version; the second was the one with static, bits of which I had heard before....

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Jul 28, 2008

The U.S. Supreme Court's risible reasoning

Laws are subject to interpretations, courts are official interpreters, and the Supreme Court has the last word. That is a fact of life, though it is also a fact of life that you sometimes wonder if there is anything "supreme" about the Supreme Court. Yes, you know that individual justices come with individual...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Jun 30, 2008

Justices made right call on habeas corpus

Among the commentaries I've read about a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, the one from George F. Will (The Japan Times, June 24) surprised me. The conservative columnist for The Washington Post upbraided Sen. John McCain for condemning Boumediene v. Bush — which upheld the right of habeas corpus...

COMMENTARY / Japan / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

May 28, 2008

Behind the failure of the Japanese economy

Takafusa Shioya has sent me his book published last year, "Keizai Saisei no Joken" (Conditions for Economic Recovery). Nearly three decades ago, during a period of a few years when Jimmy Carter's presidency morphed into Ronald Reagan's, he was stationed in the New York outpost of a Japanese trade office...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Apr 28, 2008

Bush's brutal war stirs memories of Vietnam

When the news came that Daniel Ellsberg led a rally in Concord, New Hampshire, to help impeach President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, I happened to be looking at the entries for the year 1967 in an almanac.

CULTURE / Books

Apr 13, 2008

Hailing the sensual night crawler

EAST WIND MELTS THE ICE: A Memoir through the Seasons, by Liza Dalby. University of California Press, 2007, 346 pp., $24.95 (cloth) "Earthworms twist" — "Prunella flourishes" — "Load up fertilizers" — "Moss glows green." What are these?

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Mar 31, 2008

Oxymoronic sustenance and sustainability

NEW YORK — Earlier this month there was held, in a midtown hotel, an International Conference on Climate Change. Yet another one? you might ask. But, no, this one was to make the case that Al Gore, with his argument in "An Inconvenient Truth" is a fraud, a swindler. One of the conferees' premises...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Feb 25, 2008

Is ethnic passing finally becoming passe?

NEW YORK — Just about the time Bliss Broyard's book "One Drop" came out last year, I received the latest book from my prolific friend Inuhiko Yomota, "Japan's Marrano Literature."

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Jan 28, 2008

Watching the world's biggest roadshow

NEW YORK — I was recently amused to read the following observation quoted in an intellectual history of modern Japan: "The system in which people vie to get elected head of state through indulgence in garrulity and by flaunting gestures like those of low-class actors is a singularly bizarre custom...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Jan 8, 2008

Bottle of water delivers wrong message

NEW YORK — "You really have to wonder at the utter stupidity and the irresponsibility sometimes of American consumers," Salt Lake City Mayor Ross "Rocky" Anderson said. "These false needs are provided, and too often we just fall in line with what Madison Avenue comes up with to market these unnecessary...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Nov 26, 2007

Plenty wrong with U.S. agricultural policy

NEW YORK — The U.S. farm bill — a blanket term for all measures related to agriculture, some barely so — appears doomed this year. The House version passed at the end of July, but the Senate version has been stalled in such a way that there's even talk that its enactment may not occur...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Oct 29, 2007

Fatal deliverance from an 'iron storm'

NEW YORK — I was thinking once again about the intractability of Japan's part in the Pacific phase of World War II when the news came: Okinawans had staged a huge rally to protest the Japanese government's downplaying in textbooks the military's role in "group suicides" among civilians during the...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Sep 24, 2007

The Self-Defense Forces: living with a lie

NEW YORK — Many commentators have invoked historical analogies for U.S. President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and its still unfolding aftermath, with some saying, correctly, that no exact historical analogies are possible for anything, the least of all this damnable war.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Aug 20, 2007

Why can't Americans give up their guns?

NEW YORK — Is there anything comparable to the numbing obstinacy, the utter blindness to reality, that politicians display toward the consequences of untrammeled gun ownership in this country? So I wondered, once again, when I stumbled upon President George W. Bush's answer to what some now call...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Jul 30, 2007

How a woman portrayed Hitler as human

NEW YORK — What kind of courage, or audacity even, is required to stage, in Washington, a play featuring Adolf Hitler — one provocatively titled "My Friend Hitler" and written no less than by Yukio Mishima? After all, not just Hitler, but anything associated with Hitler is condemned here....

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Jun 25, 2007

Haiku appreciation at the United Nations

NEW YORK — This month I was judge of the Japanese division of the haiku contest sponsored by the United Nations International School (UNIS). John Stevenson, editor of Frogpond, the magazine of the Haiku Society of America, judged the haiku written in English.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

May 28, 2007

Rooting out the purplish, yellow perils

NEW YORK — A certain plant of the pea family has been appreciated in Japan — poetically, dietarily and medicinally — since ancient times. So, in the oldest extant anthology of Japanese poetry, the "Man'yoshu," it is used as an epithet for "without interruption," "for a long time" and...

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.

[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Things may look perfect to the outside world, but today's mom is fine with some imperfection at home.

How 'Reiwa moms' are reshaping motherhood in Japan

By Mai Yoshikawa

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Live like a lord or lady for a night at Ozu Castle

Live like a lord or lady for a night at Ozu Castle

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