Roger Pulvers - The Japan Times

May 17, 2024

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Roger Pulvers

Roger Pulvers is an author, playwright, theater director and translator who divides his time between Tokyo and Sydney. He has published more than 40 books. His latest book in English is "The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn."

For Roger Pulvers's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Sep 4, 2005

Selective thinking devalues the V-word's worth

There is a six-letter word so abused and perverted these days that I wouldn't blame the media for banning it altogether. It is the V-word and, I must confess, I hesitated to write this column about it myself. But journalists must not be daunted by trends that pollute . . . and so, here we go. The word,...

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Aug 28, 2005

Intelligent Design: One chance encounter explains it all

Ijust happened to be reading the Kansas City Star the other day when a fascinating article caught my eye. The Star reported, in its Aug. 2 edition, that the Kansas Board of Education has approved a draft of new science standards proposed by supporters of so-called Intelligent Design.

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Aug 21, 2005

All together now, as yesterday's no-no becomes the status quo

When I first arrived in Japan in the 1960s, I was friends with a Western sociologist who was genuinely frustrated. When he went around surveying public opinion, he said that he found Japanese people to be stubbornly reserved and conservative. Apparently, those who responded to his questions about social...

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Aug 14, 2005

Chiune Sugihara: His conscience gleams out of the darkness

Exactly 60 years ago, during the evening of Aug. 14, 1945, Emperor Hirohito recorded the speech of surrender to be broadcast to the Japanese nation the next day at noon.

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Aug 7, 2005

Learning a foreign language is a cultural journey, too

English students of Japan, unite! You have nothing to lose but your (conversation school) chains!

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Jul 31, 2005

Only the names change as U.S. policy blunders on

Don't blame it on the neo-cons.

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Jul 24, 2005

Strangelove encounters of a MAD scientist kind

Herman Kahn is back in the news.

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Jul 17, 2005

All hail the Land of the Free -- or else!

The United States of America is all akilter.

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Jul 10, 2005

New horizons beckon as Train Man heads nowhere fast

The Japanese nation seems to be firmly in the grip of the otaku.

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Jul 3, 2005

Detractors have a whale of a time as Japan flounders on

The American historian Brooks Adams (1848-1927) defined history as "just one goddamn thing after another." Though it is a century old, Adams' aphorism is a spot-on characterization of the most recent events surrounding Japan.

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Jun 26, 2005

Opportunities go begging as the blind follow dissembling blind

Japan and Australia are natural partners.

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Jun 19, 2005

Media conspiracy of concealment costs social progress dear

What do these Japanese people have in common: A neighbor of people whose house has burned down; an uncle or aunt of someone who has been the victim of a crime; a person who has had food poisoning?

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Jun 12, 2005

'Woe is me' nation awaits return of its sadsack heroes

In the last days of May, news reached Japan that two former soldiers in the Imperial Army had been found in the Philippines. Apparently the two men, who had been hiding during the entire postwar period in an area around the town of General Santos close to the southern tip of the island of Mindanao, now...

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Jun 5, 2005

Will Japanese inertia never be the same again?

Who is to blame for the dead hand of inertia that has prevented Japan from forging ahead economically and politically in the last decade and a half?

COMMUNITY / COUNTERPOINT

May 29, 2005

Causes and effects can encompass far more than 'specifics'

In January 1977, an express train traveling from the Blue Mountains of New South Wales to Sydney derailed on a curve near Granville Station, 21 km west of the city. The train -- which was three minutes late when it left the last stop on its 2 1/2-hour journey -- smashed into the pillar of a bridge, killing...

COMMUNITY / COUNTERPOINT

May 22, 2005

Last laugh to the lizards, and fair play for frogs an' all

Long ago in a land skirted by two oceans, there lived a people who worshipped lizards.

COMMUNITY

May 15, 2005

Spaghetti with chopsticks makes a mess of Mishima image

Many years ago, while teaching Japanese language and literature at the Australian National University in Canberra, I asked students in a seminar to conduct an experiment on campus. That was in the 1970s, when Australia and much of the rest of the world were rediscovering Japan as an economic and cultural...

COMMUNITY

May 8, 2005

Serial stereotyping only serves others' brazen hubris

Ever since the reopening of Japan to the outside world in the mid-19th century, people from the West have categorized Japanese life in terms of one or another social model. Whatever the category chosen, though, the inference has always been that Japan is "different." How else would you account for something...

COMMUNITY

May 1, 2005

Memories are made of . . . history managed and manipulated?

Way back in 1964 and 1965 I made extended trips to and around the Soviet Union. Memories that are 40 years old are hard enough to relate to the reality of the present, let alone when they are of a country that has ceased to exist. This, though, is precisely what I aim to do.

COMMUNITY / COUNTERPOINT

Apr 24, 2005

Thirty years on, have no lessons been learned from Vietnam?

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, a war that in Vietnam is known as the "American War."

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

Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there

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