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May 02, 2024
 

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George Will
For George Will's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 11, 2013
Margaret Thatcher buoyed by vigorous virtues
Margaret Thatcher had the smooth surface of a porcelain figurine, but her decisiveness made her England's most formidable woman since Elizabeth I.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 16, 2013
William Zinsser and the art of good writing
Careful writers will not want to skip anything in William Zinsser's essays for brains whose circuitry has not been shaped by 140-character tweets.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 13, 2013
Government smacks down the Pop-Tart terrorist
Government is failing at core functions such as budgeting, yet it still empowers protectors who panic over Pop-Tart pistols and Hello Kitty bubble guns.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 11, 2013
Once upon a time, Washington was even darker
A book by the late Robert Bork, Richard Nixon's solicitor general, reminds us of Washington days that were darker than most people today can imagine.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 31, 2013
Ground conditions favor a conservative revival
The agenda of Barack Obama, whose approval rating scores lower than that of the National Rifle Association, will stimulate a conservative revival.
COMMENTARY
Dec 26, 2012
Homestead Act: the door-opener to America
At the end of this year in which election results reinserted immigration into the political conversation, remember that 2012 is the 150th anniversary of "the first comprehensive immigration law."
COMMENTARY
Dec 5, 2012
American colleges have free speech on the run
In 2007, Keith John Sampson, a middle-aged student working his way through Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis as a janitor, was declared guilty of racial harassment. Without granting Sampson a hearing, the university administration — acting as prosecutor, judge and jury — convicted him of "openly reading [a] book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject."
COMMENTARY
Sep 26, 2012
Why shouldn't pols treat voters like grownups?
In every year divisible by four, the dominant superstition of American politics — faith in the magic of presidential words and deeds — reaches an apogee that feeds national narcissism: Everything that happens anywhere is about us, is a response to something America did or did not do, and can be controlled by a president doing — even just saying — something.
COMMENTARY
Sep 19, 2012
In America, a tangled web of conflicting rights
Elaine Huguenin, who with her husband operates Elane Photography in New Mexico, asks only to be let alone. But instead of being allowed a reasonable zone of sovereignty in which to live her life in accordance with her beliefs, she is being bullied by people wielding government power.
COMMENTARY
Aug 29, 2012
Romney poised to fix a GOP problem
Conventions are the seventh-inning stretch of presidential politics, a pause to consider the interminable prelude and the coming climax. Republicans gathering in Tampa face an unusual election in which they do not have a substantial advantage concerning the most presidential subject, foreign policy.
COMMENTARY
Aug 18, 2012
'Extreme' choice makes Romney presidential
When, in his speech accepting the 1964 Republican presidential nomination, Barry Goldwater said "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" and "moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue," a media wit at the convention supposedly exclaimed, "Good God, Goldwater is going to run as Goldwater."
COMMENTARY
Aug 8, 2012
Autopsies shine light on NFL's deadly problem
Are you ready for some American football? First, however, are you ready for some autopsies? The opening of the NFL training camps coincided with the closing of the investigation into the April suicide by gunshot of Ray Easterling, 62, an eight-season NFL safety in the 1970s.
COMMENTARY
Aug 3, 2012
Bullying begins at the top of the U.S. food chain
The huge humpback whale whose friendliness precipitated a surreal seven-year — so far — federal hunt for criminality surely did not feel put upon.
COMMENTARY
Jun 29, 2012
A pat on the back for bucking a LOST cause
There they go again. Like those who say climate change is an emergency too obvious and urgent to allow for debate, some proponents of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, aka the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), say arguments against it are nonexistent. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says any such arguments "no longer exist and truly cannot even be taken with a straight face."
COMMENTARY
Jun 25, 2012
The Beach Boys get around, a half-century on
Three hours before showtime, Brian Wilson says: "There is no Rhonda."
COMMENTARY
Jun 1, 2012
It's not healthy to make a chief justice 'worry'
In one of his characteristic conniptions about people who frustrated him, Theodore Roosevelt, progressivism's first president, said of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, "I could carve out of a banana a judge with more backbone than that." TR was as mistaken about Holmes' spine as are various progressives today about Chief Justice John Roberts'.
COMMENTARY
May 21, 2012
Bipartisanship alive and well for the 'entitled'
Bipartisanship, the supposed scarcity of which so distresses the high-minded, actually is disastrously prevalent in the United States.
COMMENTARY
May 14, 2012
Consequences of the state's proclivity to tax
Bill Hewlett and David Packard, tinkering in a California garage, began what became Hewlett-Packard.
COMMENTARY
May 2, 2012
Anachronistic historian adds value
Around noon on Saturday, Nov. 23, 1963, almost exactly 24 hours after the assassination in Dallas, while the president's casket lay in the East Room of the White House, Arthur Schlesinger, John F. Kennedy's kept historian, convened a lunch at Washington's Occidental restaurant with some other administration liberals.
COMMENTARY
Apr 24, 2012
'Cruel and unusual' punishment of teenagers
In the summer of 1787, just 94 years after the Salem witch trials, as paragons of the Enlightenment such as James Madison, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin deliberated in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, a mob pelted and otherwise tormented to death a woman accused of being a witch.
'So hot you can't breathe': Extreme heat hits the Philippines
A pedestrian cools himself with a folding hand fan as he waits for a ride along a road in Manila on Wednesday, as extreme heat hit the Philippines.
Did Japan intervene to prop up the yen? Analysts think it did.
A man walks past an electronic board displaying the exchange rate for the yen against the U.S. dollar (right) in Tokyo on Tuesday.
Town to block view of Mount Fuji in response to overtourism
The town government of Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture, decided to set up a 2.5-meter-high screen to prevent tourists from taking pictures of Mount Fuji looming behind a convenience store.
Number of vacant homes in Japan hits record high of 9 million
A vacant house in Tokyo is seen demolished in January 2020.
Weak yen fattens tourist wallets in Japan
People visit the Ameya Yokocho market in Tokyo's Ueno district during the Golden Week holiday on Tuesday.
Kishida sets sights on energy and climate in South America trip
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will use a policy speech in Sao Paulo to set out his vision for ties between Japan and South America, almost 10 years after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated for stronger ties between the two in the same city.
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.
Climate change, chalky grains and the risks for Japan’s rice farmers
A farmer plants seedlings in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture. Japan’s self sufficiency rate for rice is nearly 100%, compared with 38% for food overall, on a calorie basis.
Japan wants you to spend more with ‘luxury tourism’
Performers play a traditional drum unique to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa on March 16 to mark the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line to Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture.
Theaster Gates’ ambitious ‘Afro-Mingei’ brings Black Chicago to Tokyo
Theaster Gates' “A Heavenly Chord” lines up church pews before seven speakers and a Hammond B3 organ, a type of electric organ prevalent in Black American churches.

Podcast

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

Longform

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

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