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COMMENTARY

Feb 11, 2004

SDF dispatch opens new era for Japan

By Keizo Nabeshima

The dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces to Iraq marks a watershed in Japan's post-World War II security and defense policy. The SDF has joined U.N. peacekeeping operations several times since 1992. The latest deployment, though designed primarily to support humanitarian and reconstruction efforts in...

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 10, 2004

McNamara's lesson for today's politicians

By Cesar Chelala

NEW YORK -- A recent film, "The Fog of War," directed by Errol Morris -- about former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's recollections of his political life -- should be required viewing for politicians worldwide. His testimony is valuable in several aspects. As a historical document, it provides...

COMMENTARY

Feb 10, 2004

'Next big thing' key to growth

By Takamitsu Sawa

During Japan's bubble-economy years of fiscal 1987-1990, consumer spending grew at an annualized 5.5 percent in real terms. But during the Heisei recession of fiscal 1991-2001, consumer-spending growth slowed to an annualized 1.0 percent. Most experts agree that the slowdown in consumer spending, which...

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 8, 2004

Resist the attempts to recognize Taiwan

By Glyn Ford

TAIPEI -- The Cold War may be over in Europe, but it is very much still with us in Asia. The North-South division on the Korean Peninsula is still possibly the world's most dangerous political stand-off. Not far behind is the tension between China and Taiwan. A civil war between the two was frozen just...

COMMENTARY

Feb 8, 2004

Politicians born of the media

By Ronald Meinardus

MANILA -- The media has become a decisive factor in electoral politics in democracies throughout the world. I would even argue that it is impossible to find a democratic country today in which a candidate could win a majority without using the media. Whenever political parties or candidates campaign,...

COMMENTARY

Feb 7, 2004

Flu brings out worst in Asia

By Harvey Stockwin

HONG KONG -- Amid the spread of bird flu, developing Asian nations face a challenge they are failing to meet, because a degree of modernity is required that they are unable to attain. On the one hand, Asia pursues the skyscrapers, the summit conferences, the high-tech industries seen as symbols of modernity....

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 7, 2004

Japan crosses the Rubicon

By Richard Halloran

HONOLULU -- Japan has crossed the Rubicon, with surprisingly little opposition at home or abroad, by starting to dispatch armed soldiers to Iraq in their first deployment to a combat zone since World War II.

COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE

Feb 6, 2004

Candidates in sudden death

By Bob Keefe

WASHINGTON -- What a difference a month can make in the campaign to win the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. As the election year started, we had a front-runner with a big bankroll and double-digit leads in the polls: Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean was threatening to run away with the nomination,...

COMMENTARY

Feb 5, 2004

Musharraf must convince skeptical public

By Farhan Bokhari

ISLAMABAD -- Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has taken the unprecedented step of ordering an investigation of some of the country's top nuclear scientists on charges that they helped transfer nuclear-weapons technology to Iran. While the investigation has been hailed in the West as a decisive...

COMMENTARY

Feb 4, 2004

The not-so cordial entente

By David Howell

LONDON -- 2004 marks the 100th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale -- the accord between Britain and France of 1904 that marked a new era of friendship, the ending of numerous disputes and, as it turned out, intimate military alliance in two world wars.

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 3, 2004

U.S. plans consolidation of Pacific forces

By Richard Halloran

HONOLULU -- U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is planning a sweeping revision of the command apparatus through which American military forces are controlled in Asia in an effort to make them more responsive to contingencies from the Korean Peninsula to Australia.

COMMENTARY

Feb 3, 2004

British society's fatal divide

By Sarah Benton

LONDON -- Last week the inquiry by Senior Appeals Judge Lord Hutton into the July 18 death of weapons expert Dr. David Kelly cleared all state politicians and civil servants -- bar one -- of any blame for Kelly's death and indicted the media, in particular the BBC, for Kelly's wretched end. The one state...

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

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