More Commentary Articles - The Japan Times

September 10, 2025

Today's print edition

Subscribe for more access

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 23, 2003

Bringing Alberto Fujimori to justice

By W. Bradnee Chambers

Alberto Fujimori, Radovan Karadzic, Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush and Tony Blair all share a common, though dubious, distinction. All these heads or former heads of state have been charged with crimes against humanity.

COMMENTARY

Aug 23, 2003

Pawns for Tokyo's hardliners

By Gregory Clark

Japan seems bound forever to want to embark on quixotic foreign-policy campaigns. Yesterday it was Tokyo's bizarre Northern Territories demands against Moscow. Today it is its equally bizarre abductee demands against Pyongyang.

COMMENTARY

Aug 23, 2003

U.S. a misunderstood giant

By Ralph Cossa

HONOLULU -- "Once the Bush administration is done attacking North Korea, will Vietnam be next?" This seemed to be the burning question in the back of many people's minds as I visited Vietnam for a series of lectures on U.S. foreign policy.

COMMENTARY

Aug 22, 2003

Getting realistic on defense

By Hugh Cortazzi

LONDON -- Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's government has taken some sensible steps toward a more realistic defense policy. In particular there has been some easing in dealing with emergency situations. Japanese Self-Defense Forces can also now be sent to Iraq to support peacekeeping there, but they...

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 21, 2003

Making free trade work for all

By Douglas Brooks

MANILA -- Trade ministers from around the world will meet in Cancun, Mexico, next month to assess progress in making the ongoing series of World Trade Organization negotiations a "development round." Their success in achieving that goal will have a profound effect on the future of hundreds of millions...

COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE

Aug 21, 2003

California's political circus comes to town

By Bob Keefe

WASHINGTON -- California Gov. Gray Davis will need more than a little luck to carry the day in the gubernatorial recall election now set for Oct. 7. As the campaign starts, he needs to gain ground quickly and mightily to remain in office. The voters are prepared to vote to oust him by margins ranging...

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 20, 2003

Seoul should join interdiction group

By Victor Cha

WASHINGTON -- This fall much attention will be focused on the start of six-party multilateral talks in Beijing to stop North Korea's nuclear-weapons program. These talks, should they take place as committed to by Pyongyang last week, are a welcome development. For the first time in more than a decade,...

COMMENTARY

Aug 20, 2003

Washington must live by the limits of its responsibility

By Doug Bandow

WASHINGTON -- American troops have arrived in Liberia after Liberian President Charles Taylor fled into exile. Whether these peacekeepers, and the larger African contingents to come, will bring peace in the three-sided civil war is yet uncertain. What is certain, however, is that reconstructing Liberia...

COMMENTARY

Aug 19, 2003

The borrowing can't go on

By David Howell

LONDON -- These are difficult and dangerous days for economic forecasters and financial experts. As usual they are deeply divided on the fate of the world economy. On the one hand, the giant American economy is showing faint signs of recovering its nerve as the last wreckage of the dotcom bubble is cleared...

COMMENTARY

Aug 18, 2003

Responsibility to protect against state abuse

By Brad Glosserman

KUALA LUMPUR -- The annual Asia-Pacific Roundtable is an invaluable opportunity to take the pulse of Southeast Asian thinking about security issues. This year's meeting, the 17th, featured the usual U.S. bashing -- a predictable response to overwhelming American power and the Bush administration's readiness...

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 18, 2003

Choosing human security

By Ramesh Thakur

The notion of "human security" has gradually but steadily gained greater international currency. Canada and Japan, especially under former Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy and the late former Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, respectively, were prominent early advocates of incorporating the...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Aug 17, 2003

Black widows striking back

By Constantine Pleshakov

MOSCOW -- Animalistic labels stick to terror. Adolf Hitler's commandos were called werewolves; terrorist cells in Turkey in the 1970s, gray wolves; now the Russian media have christened Chechen female suicide bombers black widows.

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.

The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight

By Mai Yoshikawa

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Foreign wrestlers have a long history in sumo

Foreign wrestlers have a long history in sumo

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER

international-reports