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May 05, 2024
 

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Leonid Bershidsky
For Leonid Bershidsky's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 17, 2017
Austria's millennial hope walks a fine line
If Sebastian Kurz fails to control the scary forces bubbling under the Freedom Party's surface, both Austria and the EU will regret that he got his chance to run a nation as early as he did.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 3, 2017
No Phillips head, no problem, says IKEA
Ikea's acquisition of a 'gig economy' firm is an admission that it can no longer take its customers' manual skills for granted.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 15, 2017
Russia is an emerging superpower in food supply
Climate change is opening up vast regions in Russia to farming.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 11, 2017
Iceland could give Google a lesson on gender policy
The valid points in the fired Google worker's gender diversity manifesto shouldn't be drowned out by a chorus of condemnation.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 8, 2017
Why shirtless Putin is having the last laugh
He wants to be seen as a strong man unconcerned by sanctions. Western media laps it up.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 30, 2017
Government promises won't kill the combustion engine
The campaign to convince consumers that the combustion era is ending and electric is taking over is working about as well as anti-smoking campaigns did before cigarettes were banned in most public spaces and became prohibitively expensive for many smokers.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 24, 2017
Putin's no good, but where's the alternative?
No Russian political leader is offering a vision ambitious and inspiring enough to compete with Putin. Perhaps that's why he finds it so easy to suppress dissent and hold on to power.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 14, 2017
Islamic State remains dangerous in defeat
Islamic State soon won't have a physical presence on war-zone maps — but it will live on in other forms.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 26, 2017
Saudi Arabian heir is a dangerous man
Prince Mohammed bin Salman could be too inexperienced and too hotheaded for the fraught situation in the Middle East.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 20, 2017
Why tower blocks are unfit for public housing
Countries that still house many of their poor in tower blocks need to work on moving them out into human-scale housing that can be maintained more efficiently.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 19, 2017
Remembering Helmut Kohl's unfinished business
The late German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was the man who put German history to bed, and helped lay the groundwork for the current confrontation between Russia and the West.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 29, 2017
'Bad Germans' and other Trump blunders
U.S. President Donald Trump's Brussels trip displayed a now familiar disregard for the facts.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 18, 2017
Vladimir Putin holds the key to the North Korea quandary
Unless the U.S. wants to risk using force in North Korea, it needs Russia's cooperation in resolving the crisis.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 8, 2017
Now the EU must change
The bloc's growing popularity is helping centrist leaders win, but without reform the effect won't last.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 4, 2017
Tech underestimates demand for privacy
The more intrusive the tech industry becomes, the less users want to be the commodity sold by tech companies to advertisers or other exploiters of behavioral data and the more demand there will be for means of resistance.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 27, 2017
Why Erdogan seeks provocation in Europe
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been providing plenty of fodder lately for people who believes Europe is in danger of Islamization.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 24, 2017
Why nationalists need like-minded foreigners
The nationalist populist parties of today can't achieve global success unless they form a common agenda that is less grounded in local values than in a common ideology.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 21, 2017
The happiest nations don't focus on growth
The world's happiest nations rank low in economic growth but high in social trust.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 17, 2017
Wilders' defeat is no reason for complacency
The problems that nearly handed Dutch nationalist Geert Wilders a win are not going away.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 14, 2017
The electric vehicle rush started too early
The modern electric vehicle is conceptually inconsistent with how people want to use cars, and in many countries the environmental effect of switching to EVs is negligible.
Japan says Biden's description of nation as xenophobic is 'unfortunate'
The National Diet building in Tokyo
With eye on China, defense chiefs agree to bolster interoperability
From left: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Australian defense chief Richard Marles, Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara and Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro hold a joint news conference in Honolulu on Thursday.
The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces
Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.
Japan drops to 70th in press freedom rankings
A businessman reads a newspaper outside a train station in Tokyo.
Traders spooked by intervention risk trim record yen shorts
Traders edged back from record bets on yen weakness this past week, in a period that included a likely bout of intervention by Japan to prop up the currency.
'Monster' Inoue ready to tear down Luis Nery in title defense at Tokyo Dome
Naoya Inoue (left) and Luis Nery following a pre-fight news conference in Yokohama on Saturday, two days ahead of their super bantamweight title fight.
Debate on constitutional revision at a standstill despite Kishida's pledges
With less than two months left before the conclusion of the current session of parliament, any possibility that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida can deliver constitutional reform before the end of his term as Liberal Democratic Party president in late September, as he has promised, appears remote.
Sapporo court ruling on Ainu fishing rights presents tough questions
A traditional Ainu preserved food called <i>satchep</i> (dried fish) being made at the government-run National Ainu Museum and Park, nicknamed Upopoy, in the town of Shiraoi, Hokkaido, on Dec. 25. The Sapporo District Court ruled last month that the Raporo Ainu Nation's rights as an Indigenous people did not extend to having an inherent right to fish for commercial reasons.
With eye on China, defense chiefs agree to bolster interoperability
From left: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Australian defense chief Richard Marles, Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara and Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro hold a joint news conference in Honolulu on Thursday.
Yellow sand allergy: A health issue made worse by climate change
A screenshot of the Meteorological Agency's satellite image of clouds and yellow sand (in pink) on Sunday.

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Longform

Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.
The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces
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