More Commentary Articles - The Japan Times

Today's print edition

Subscribe for more access

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 19, 2004

Chechen-Arab connection goes far back

By Nonna Chernyakova

CHICAGO -- As gunmen seized a school full of hostages in southern Russia last week, President Vladimir Putin had held a meeting that might have seemed to some like a distraction.

COMMENTARY

Sep 19, 2004

Removing the thorn from Japan-China ties

By Frank Ching

HONG KONG -- Last month, when Japanese and Chinese teams faced each other in the Asian Games soccer final in Beijing, Chinese fans booed so loudly that they drowned out the strains of the Japanese national anthem. And when Japan won, the spectators pelted the Japanese players' bus with soda bottles and...

COMMENTARY

Sep 17, 2004

An oil shock on the horizon?

By David Howell

LONDON -- The world is now drinking 84 million barrels of oil each day. The figure may be meaningless to most people but to energy planners, security strategists and environmentalists it spells growing disappointment and danger. Why so? Because only a short while ago the figure was 72 million barrels,...

COMMENTARY

Sep 16, 2004

Pyongyang deal still possible

By Ralph Cossa

SEOUL -- "The odds of any progress regarding the North Korean nuclear issue appear slim to nonexistent between now and the U.S. November presidential elections." This is the conventional wisdom, as publicly proclaimed by South Korean officials. I have also heard this view echoed in Washington and Beijing...

COMMENTARY

Sep 15, 2004

The Tiananmen Square massacre myth

By Gregory Clark

China's recent ceremonies to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of former leader Deng Xiaoping have given the Tiananmen massacre myth yet another lease of life. Most media commentators, the BBC especially, have rehashed the standard condemnation of Deng as a hardliner who instigated a massacre of...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 14, 2004

Indonesians' choice: change or status quo

By Eric Teo Chu Cheow

SINGAPORE -- Indonesians go to the polls Sept. 20 in the second round of balloting to choose between Megawati Sukarnoputri and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (affectionally known as SBY) as president for the next five years.

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 12, 2004

Reviving an idea for Asian community

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- Thailand recently hosted an important regional meeting whose main theme was how to begin realizing the vision of an East Asian community. Academics and other opinion leaders from several Asian countries gathered in Bangkok under the framework of the Network of East Asian Think...

COMMENTARY

Sep 12, 2004

New EU gears could grind

By Hugh Cortazzi

LONDON -- Jose Durao Barroso, the next president of the European Commission, faces many difficult challenges. He will need all the support he can get from the governments of the enlarged community of 25 states.

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 11, 2004

China takes no chances in Hong Kong poll

By Kevin Rafferty

HONG KONG -- It is now clear that China is quietly tearing up the fine promises it made in 1984 that Hong Kong would be permitted a high degree of autonomy when China resumed sovereignty over the city after 150 years of British colonial rule. Beijing is going to great lengths to ensure that prodemocracy...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 11, 2004

India continues to shine for only a few

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

MADRAS, India -- One important cause for the debacle of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition in the recent Indian general elections was their slogan, "India Shining." Some analysts feel that it alienated the country's millions of poor people.

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 11, 2004

U.S. troop shift rightly raises concern

By John Barry Kotch

SEOUL -- It was inevitable that Korea, at some point, would rear its complicated head as a campaign issue. In a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry said the withdrawal of 12,000 of the 37,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea would destabilize...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 11, 2004

Slow progress for Pyongyang

By Glyn Ford

BRUSSELS -- In July 2002, North Korea instituted wage and price reforms that officially introduced the market into the economy. Such change had been on the horizon since the famine of the late 1990s, driven by a certain inevitability as the distribution system started to creak and stutter. Informal --...

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.

Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.

By Tomoko Otake

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Fujitsu crafts sustainable innovation for itself, society

Fujitsu crafts sustainable innovation for itself, society

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER

international-reports