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May 06, 2025
 

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COMMENTARY / World
May 21, 2002
Time to put Sino-Japanese rivalry aside
By Ahn Byung Joon
Observing the prolonged negotiations over the fate of five North Korean asylum seekers seized by Chinese police from the Japanese Consulate General in Shenyang and the widespread criticism in Japan over the way that Japanese diplomats handled the matter, it seems vital to decouple the humanitarian issue...
COMMENTARY
May 20, 2002
Too early to fete a new day for Myanmar
By Harvey Stockwin
HONG KONG -- On May 7, Vietnam inadvertently hindered 50 million Myanmarese from learning that "at last Aung Sang Suu Kyi is no longer under house arrest." The Myanmar government's authoritarian habits prevailed at the very moment when hopes of future democracy were reborn.
COMMENTARY / JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL ERA
May 20, 2002
Parochialism produces few world leaders
By Jean-pierre Lehmann
LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- Following the appearance of one of the recent articles in this series on Japan in the global era, a colleague of mine, Dominique Turpin, who has been doing research on Japanese industry for some 20 years, came into my office and said, "Jean-Pierre, when are you going to start...
COMMENTARY
May 20, 2002
Dispel the end-of-era mood
By Morihiro Hosokawa
An interesting new book by Edo Period literary expert Takehiko Noguchi, "Bakumatsu Kibun" (The Mood in the Last Days of the Tokugawa Shogunate), details how shogunate officials and citizens of Edo indulged themselves in lavish consumption and entertainment as they faced the demise of the government....
COMMENTARY
May 20, 2002
Musharraf must bring growth, security
By Farhan Bokhari
ISLAMABAD -- The suicide bomber in Karachi, Pakistan's southern port city, who killed 11 French citizens in broad daylight, could not have found a more opportune moment to strike against the government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The general has spent the past few months trying to convince skeptics of...
COMMENTARY / World
May 20, 2002
Monarchy retains role in Thai democracy
By Michael J. Montesano
SINGAPORE -- A decade ago this week, tens of thousands of Thais took to the streets of Bangkok to topple Prime Minister Suchinda Kraprayun. Gen. Suchinda had led the successful February 1991 coup d'etat against the elected government of Chatchai Chunhawan. The terms of a constitution drafted on Suchinda's...
COMMENTARY / World
May 19, 2002
A foil to the 'Asian Miracle'
By David Wall
CAMBRIDGE, England -- The past few weeks have been sad ones for the supporters of the still young democratic process in South Korea. It has been alleged that a web of corruption surrounds the presidency of Kim Dae Jung, winner of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. While no one has, yet, suggested that the president...
COMMENTARY / World
May 19, 2002
Ending the outrage of child marriages
By Gautaman Bhaskaran
NEW DELHI -- For a country that boasts the 21st-century trappings of a space program, nuclear energy and state-of-the-art communications, child marriage is a shocking sociological phenomenon. Every day children in India are marched to community halls and forced into lifelong relationships that hold little...
COMMENTARY
May 19, 2002
Koizumi must act to end his state of siege
By Kenzo Uchida
I cannot help but suspect that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and the members of his Cabinet feel beset with troubles both at home and abroad as the current session of the Diet enters the homestretch.
COMMENTARY / World
May 18, 2002
Koizumi overplays his hand in Shenyang
By Wenran Jiang
BEIJING -- There is a sharp contrast between Japan and China on how they have handled the incident of North Korean asylum-seekers in Japan's Shenyang consulate general. While Beijing has taken a low-key approach, Tokyo has blown the whole matter into crisis proportion, creating a nationwide sensation...
COMMENTARY
May 17, 2002
Iranians-in-exile mull return of the shah
By Tom Plate
BEVERLY HILLS, California -- These days the animated chatter in this storied city's sun-splashed cafes and deep-carpeted restaurants is not about the aftermath of 9/11, or the fall of Enron, or even the Middle East imbroglio. It's about the coming revolution in Iran.
COMMENTARY
May 17, 2002
Japan at its inconsistent worst
By Gregory Clark
Japan's overheated reaction to the May 8 North Korean refugee incident at the Japanese consulate-general in Shenyang, northeast China, is worrying.
Why are rice prices still high in Japan?
Amid shortages, the price of a 5-kilogram bag of rice during the week of April 14 was ¥4,220.
Police arrest man after body of ex-girlfriend found under his home
Hideyuki Shirai (center) at Tokyo's Haneda Airport on Saturday
Dollar’s decline is fueling dislocations across Asian currencies
A worker counts U.S. dollar banknotes at a currency exchange office in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 2022.
Worker shortage forcing home care providers to turn away clients, survey finds
A survey by a labor union of home care business operators and care managers found that nearly 90% of facility managers had turned down service requests at least once during the past year, citing insufficient staffing.
Why are rice prices still high in Japan?
Amid shortages, the price of a 5-kilogram bag of rice during the week of April 14 was ¥4,220.
Plug and Play wants to help Japanese startups go global
Phillip Vincent (right), Japan CEO of Plug and Play, and Ma Jingqian, head of ventures, at Plug and Play's Tokyo office, last month
Kotomi Li: 'I refuse to choose death'
Since 2017, Kotomi Li has won some of Japan’s top literary awards and built a formidable career in the face of persistent online harassment. “Authors are tenacious creatures to begin with,” she says.
Want to see the future at the Osaka Expo? Get in line.
“‘Future of life,’ by Ishiguro,” the World Expo pavilion by roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, displays humanlike androids.
Despite shifts in Japan's political landscape, constitutional revision still far off
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has been a staunch advocate for constitutional reform.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Dangami House is a 180-year-old former samurai residence of the Kato clan, who ruled over Ozu, Ehime Prefecture, until the Meiji Restoration.
A house, a legacy and the quiet work of restoration in rural Japan
By Hanako Lowry

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