For Noriko Hama's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Shunto is in full swing. Or so it should be. Or so they say. Shunto is the Japanese word for the annual spring round of wage negotiations conducted between big business and trade unions. This "spring offensive" used to feature large in the annual ...
Afriend asks via email: "Did you see the video of Abe in Davos?" I hadn't. So I did. Many thanks to the friend for some highly toe-curling and blood-curdling entertainment. Much effort must have gone into achieving that overall effect. Gripping as the performance was, the ...
Paul McCartney was in Japan some weeks ago. Having spent a totally Beatlemaniac four years of my pre-teen existence in the U.K., it was nice to see the erstwhile Beatle in such good form. The occasion also reminded me of the song "Back in the ...
"He that would keep a secret must keep it secret that he hath a secret to keep," says Sir Humphrey Appleby, permanent secretary to the Department of Administrative Affairs, a fictitious branch of the British government. He is one of the main characters in ...
Three guesses on who said the following. "A tax upon the necessaries of life operates exactly in the same manner as a direct tax upon the wages of labor. . . . Any rise in the average price of necessaries, unless it is compensated by ...
U.S. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke hints at policy change. He is looking for an exit from quantitative easing whereby he has been buying financial assets to the order of $85 billion per month since the end of last year. He has emphasized ...
A scene from "The Life of Galilei" seems to encapsulate the dilemma Japan faces as it gropes for new leadership. "Woe betide a nation without heroes." "Not so. Woe betide a nation in need of heroes." This exchange from the play by anti-establishment German playwright Bertolt Brecht ...
The greatly hyped "third arrow" of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's economic plans has fallen spectacularly by the wayside. The stock prices on which Abe & Co. had staked their all began falling even as he was explaining his economic strategy in a speech. Given the ...
Two mind-sets seem to be catching on in Japan these days. They worry me. One is the notion that something has to be useful to be of value. The other is that anything is justifiable on the grounds that everybody else is doing it. The ...
As I observe Team Abe in action at the helm of the Bank of Japan and elsewhere, a rather terrifying passage from a poem by William Hughes Mearns comes to mind: "Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't ...
