Glyn Ford - The Japan Times

November 04, 2025

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Glyn Ford

COMMENTARY / World

Jul 26, 2011

EU breaks the lock on hungry North Koreans

The European Union announced July 4 it would provide €10 million of emergency food aid to North Korea through the World Food Program (WFP) until the end of September — before this year's harvest.

COMMENTARY

Dec 15, 2009

Business challenge for Europe after Lisbon

CINDERFORD, England — The much-delayed final ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, and the appointment of former Belgium Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy as president of the European Union and Britain's Cathy Ashton as de facto foreign minister, means that the EU will increasingly take center stage on...

COMMENTARY

Sep 23, 2009

Time to boost Japan-EU ties

CINDERFORD, England — Yukio Hatoyama and the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) have finally taken up the reins of power after their stunning election victory Aug. 30. The promise of their manifesto is change. With politicians on top and bureaucrats on tap, Japan is to develop a proactive autonomous foreign...

COMMENTARY

Jun 26, 2009

EU cyclone belts the left

BRUSSELS — The only results to cheer in the recent European Parliament elections came from Greece, where PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) went up to nine seats, and Ireland, where the financial crisis and public re-evaluation of regulation saw the Irish Labour party win two to three seats. Meanwhile,...

COMMENTARY

Jul 31, 2008

Money can't buy Tibetan love

By all measures Tibet's economy is booming. In the past 30 years its growth rate has outstripped the rest of China's, 10.4 percent to 9.8 percent year on year. The result is that the vast majority of Tibetans have been pulled out of deep poverty.

COMMENTARY

Jul 28, 2008

EU, Japan should try to make up for lost time

BRUSSELS — After the Cold War, in which Europe and Japan played subordinate political — and military — roles to Washington, the European Union and Japan found themselves in the position of being "economic giants" but "political dwarves."

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 27, 2008

LDP's future as dicey as Humpty Dumpty's

BRUSSELS — Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has been in office less than 12 months, yet polls show popular support for his administration running around 20 percent. Fukuda and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) face a bleak future.

COMMENTARY / World

May 1, 2008

Food crisis endangering millions

BRUSSELS — The World Trade Organization (WTO) is in the last throes of its Doha Development Round negotiations, the European Union is currently undertaking a "health check" on its Common Agricultural Policy and the whole world is opening biofuel plants as a technological fix to curb CO2 emissions and...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 4, 2008

Cambodia's revenge fiasco

BRUSSELS — Cambodia is currently witnessing the commencement of what is likely to become a grotesque farce. In July, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia will try four Khmer Rouge leaders, as well as the commandant of the infamous S21 Tuol Sleng prison, for crimes committed more than...

COMMENTARY / World

Jan 21, 2008

Insurrections push Philippines to the brink

MANILA —The current president of the Philippines, Gloria Arroyo, whose election in 2004 was deeply flawed, but probably not fraudulent, is currently beset by a sea of troubles that threaten to overwhelm her regime.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 16, 2007

Fascist currents in the EU mainstream

LONDON — On a cold wet November evening the dreamy spires of Oxford University became the unlikely setting for a new front line between the organization Unite Against Fascism and the far-right British National Party (BNP).

COMMENTARY

Aug 18, 2007

China's tough leap forward

BRUSSELS — Ever since Deng Xiaoping's aphorism "Black cat, white cat, who cares as long as it can catch mice" was burned into Chinese souls by the successive horrors of the Great Leap Forward, its resulting famine and the Cultural Revolution's shambolic savagery, China has seen 10 percent-plus growth...

COMMENTARY / World

Jan 14, 2007

Aceh peace pays off for election victor

BRUSSELS -- After the second anniversary of Aceh's tragic tsunami, peace seems to have finally come to the troubled province. Official results of the Dec. 11 provincial elections came with the new year. They confirmed a landslide victory for one faction of the former rebels.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 2, 2006

Talks doomed without EU

BRUSSELS -- After a 15-month hiatus, North Korea will return to Beijing in December for resumption of the China-brokered six-party talks with the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Rus- sia in attendance. Yet unless U.S. President George W. Bush makes a sharp turn of direction, prospects for a...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 19, 2006

European politics swing right

BRUSSELS -- Europe is in danger of seeing its extreme-right parties move into the mainstream. The message has changed. Anti-Semitism has metamorphosed into "Islamophobia" since 9/11, finding a popular resonance with those bearing the consequences of the war on terror. Islamophobia has become the prejudice...

CULTURE / Books

Aug 27, 2006

Picturing North Korean propaganda

Japan's comic craze was first documented for the West with the publication of Frederick Schodt's "Manga Manga, The World of Japanese Comics" (1983). Since then, the production and consumption of manga and anime -- its moving picture equivalent -- have spread to China and the Republic of Korea. More recently,...

COMMENTARY / World

Jul 24, 2006

Tories need to do more than pick on EU

BRUSSELS -- All the focus groups in Britain demonstrate that people do not care about Europe. Or at least they certainly don't treat it as a priority. The economy, health and education, as well as quality of life and security issues, con- sistently rate higher. Yet David Cameron's Tories are still falling...

COMMENTARY / World

Jan 24, 2006

Ending a barbarity against black bears

BRUSSELS -- Last month the cruel practice of farming Asiatic black bears for their bile was put firmly on the global agenda as 377 members of the European Parliament -- more than half the EP membership -- signed a written declaration calling on China to ban this barbarity. With bear bile already illegal...

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Jan 15, 2006

Two writers, two very different North Koreas

NORTH KOREA: The Struggle Against American Power, by Tim Beal. Pluto, 2005, 352 pp., £18.99 (paper). NORTH KOREA: The Paranoid Peninsula, by Paul French. Zed Books Ltd., 2005, 352 pp.,£17.95 (paper). The subtitles of these books reveal the sharply differing points of departure on North Korea for writers...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 20, 2005

Making a difference in Aceh

BRUSSELS -- The European Union's successive waves of industrial, social, economic and monetary integration have come and, mostly, gone. The cutting edge of political debate within the EU now centers on an emerging Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.

The second life of Japan's net cafes

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Foreign wrestlers have a long history in sumo

Foreign wrestlers have a long history in sumo

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