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Tom Plate

Tom Plate, a veteran American columnist and career journalist, is the Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Affairs at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. His many books include the "Giants of Asia" series, of which book four, "Conversations with Ban Ki-Moon: The View from the Top," is the latest.

For Tom Plate's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

COMMENTARY

Apr 22, 2011

Latest word from Mahathir

Before the prime ministry of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, not that many people had ever heard of Malaysia, outside of adjacent Singapore, which shared a common border as well as an intense mutual antipathy that entertained the rest of Southeast Asia for decades.

COMMENTARY

Apr 17, 2011

U.S. need more advice from a good friend

Know thy enemy? That's a good idea, especially for us Americans when we set out to police the world. Another good idea is to know who our real friends are. Confusion, in this age of a so-called "clash of civilizations" - where the enemy is said to be Islam - is definitely a bad idea.

COMMENTARY

Mar 21, 2011

U.S. gesture would reduce risks posed by weak Kan government

LOS ANGELES — It was a perfect (if quiet) storm in the tense triangular relationship among Beijing, Tokyo and Washington, but with all the noise coming from North Africa and the Middle East, hardly anyone noticed three developments.

COMMENTARY

Feb 2, 2011

Beijing should take a leaf out of Li Na's book

LOS ANGELES — A metaphor for our dramatic world geopolitical change occurred in Melbourne at the prestigious Australian Open. There, even as time-honored warriors Roger Federer and Raphael Nadal were eliminated, a Chinese woman slammed her way into history. The relentless Li Na became the first Asian woman to advance to the final of a major tennis championship.

COMMENTARY

Jan 9, 2011

A unifying method to Kim Jong Il's 'genius'

LOS ANGELES — You have to be dumber than a brick to believe that the North Korea problem can be solved by anything other than diplomacy and negotiation. Even the Macho Man of South Korea seems to have been hit with a bout of annoying but inescapable reason.

COMMENTARY

Dec 26, 2010

Growing a world-class university in Arabia

DUBAI — From the Malay Peninsula to the Arabian Peninsula, it is the wise ruler who knows two of the most basic rules of modern economic development.

COMMENTARY

Nov 24, 2010

Always expect the unexpected in politics

LOS ANGELES — Sometimes truly strange things happen in life. For those of us on America's West Coast, who would have thought that Jerry Brown would become governor of California again? His first time out as our chief state executive (in his 30s, and full of rather unconventional ideas), they called him "Governor Moonbeam." This was not meant as a compliment. The Brown precedent suggests: Don't be surprised by a surprise. Here is our short list of possible unexpected developments. Don't be surprised if:

COMMENTARY

Nov 7, 2010

The life and times of an American 'mentor'

LOS ANGELES — As far as I know, Nebraska-born Theodore "Ted" Sorensen, who died last week at 82, disagreed with me only twice. He was right both times.

COMMENTARY

Oct 22, 2010

Are China and Japan on a collision course?

LOS ANGELES — The people of China and Japan deserve better leadership at the top than they have been getting. But better leadership is not immediately in prospect for either ancient nation. That means relations between the two giant economies will probably get worse, when improvement is urgently needed before some part of East Asia blows up.

COMMENTARY

Aug 22, 2010

Flying the humanitarian flag among Muslims

NEW YORK — What's the one major issue the West absolutely and totally must get right in the years ahead? If the obvious answer is not peaceful international relations with an increasingly assertive China, then it has to be the West's ever-more complicated relationship with the world's Muslims.

COMMENTARY

Aug 8, 2010

Interesting times on Asia's south-east seas

LOS ANGELES — The Obama administration is raising the U.S. profile in the South China Sea and in the newly troubled seas around the Korean Peninsula. Its decisions are sound enough, and they have been put forth carefully and with proportionality, but they do entail risks and may test the China-U.S. relationship.

COMMENTARY

Jun 11, 2010

Who to credit for Asia's extraordinary rise?

LOS ANGELES — The extraordinary rise of Asia in recent decades cannot be understood or appreciated without some reference to outstanding leadership. Consider the experience of other regions of the world.

COMMENTARY

Jun 6, 2010

Another political circus act flops in Tokyo

LOS ANGELES — The prime minister of Japan has just resigned. Big deal.

COMMENTARY

May 1, 2010

President Lee demonstrates cool in crisis

LOS ANGELES — It is true that there is not much that Lee Myung Bak could reasonably do, one way or the other, in response to the sinking of a South Korean naval patrol vessel in the Korean seas. But what little the president of that country has done, he has done near perfectly. This needs to be noted.

COMMENTARY

Apr 26, 2010

China's true supporters versus the hackers

Caring about China can be hard to do. Many Chinese, for starters, resent it when others express concern, viewing it as an intrusion, especially when the other party disagrees with something China has done.

COMMENTARY

Apr 15, 2010

Thailand's bloodshed is unbefitting of a king

Even viewing the spectacle from afar, it is utterly brutal on the emotions to observe an otherwise wondrous people and culture tearing itself in two. No one who has ever been treated to the endless charm and hospitality of the Thai people could be blamed for practically breaking into tears over the sight of the crackdown in Bangkok.

COMMENTARY

Apr 7, 2010

How Google got too hot for China's kitchen

It is one of the positives of my largely happy life that I never found myself in the field of public relations with a client like Beijing. It's not that there aren't many wondrously good stories about China — hundreds of millions of otherwise dirt-poor people moving up into a better economic life, etcetera — and others we still have to learn about. But as long as old geezers in Beijing are still calling the biggest shots for the globe's most populated nation, China remains an account no one would want.

COMMENTARY

Mar 31, 2010

Why China kills a chicken to scare monkeys

It may be that Zhu Rongji is the most important Chinese political figure since the death of Mao Zedong's relatively enlightened successor Deng Xiaoping, I don't know. As China's previous premier (number two of the whole place) he was certainly the key technical engineer of China's audacious and epochal move into the World Trade Organization.

COMMENTARY

Mar 17, 2010

China's diplomacy suffering an identity crisis

Chinese diplomacy generally comes in all sizes and shapes, but until relatively recently the size was small and the shape a question mark.

COMMENTARY

Mar 11, 2010

The U.S. media badly needs a wakeup call

Different societies allow their news media different roles. In most countries the media is subordinated to power, whether of the government or the ruling class. Surprisingly or not, the American model is not widely emulated globally.

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

When trying to trace your lineage in Japan, the "koseki" is the most important form of document you'll encounter.

Climbing the branches of a Japanese family tree

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Prize winner Maki Imoto catches light with glass

Prize winner Maki Imoto catches light with glass

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