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EDITORIALS

Oct 26, 2005

Mr. Rumsfeld's visit to Asia

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has just concluded a quick tour of Northeast Asia. Mr. Rumsfeld is a relatively infrequent visitor to this part of the world, so his trip provides insight into U.S. thinking about security concerns in the region. In particular, the secretary's "frank" discussions...

COMMENTARY

Oct 26, 2005

A Koizumi promise not worth keeping

By Brad Glosserman

HONOLULU -- Last week, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made his fifth visit to Yasukuni Shrine. There was the predictable response from other Asian nations, but it is clear that those protests fall on deaf ears. If the prime minister's determination is plain, so too are the consequences, and they have...

EDITORIALS

Oct 25, 2005

Postal reform just the start

With the Diet's Oct. 14 passage of the postal-services privatization bills, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has reaped a reward for his daring decision to dissolve the Lower House. But the postal privatization is only the first of many issues that the government has to address to streamline its operations...

COMMENTARY

Oct 24, 2005

How clear is Japan's future?

By Hugh Cortazzi

The editors of three leading British journals (The Times, The Financial Times and The Economist) have recently visited Japan and reported positively on Japan's economic prospects. They noted that Japan had largely recovered from "the lost decade." The Economist was bullish, heading its recent supplement...

COMMENTARY

Oct 24, 2005

Tired of military presence

By Kiroku Hanai

As expected, U.S. base-relocation plans in Japan -- part of the U.S. strategy of global troop realignment -- are facing difficulties. Americans living near military bases at home may be opposed to cutbacks for fear of losing jobs, but people in Japan, an island country one-twenty-fifth the size of the...

EDITORIALS

Oct 24, 2005

Child violence raises concern

Japan's primary-school children appear to have become more violent, according to statistics from a recent report by the Education and Science Ministry. To use a contemporary Japanese expression, they have become "kire-yasui." This expression, which literally means their "nerves tend to snap easily,"...

EDITORIALS

Oct 23, 2005

No winners in the noodle wars

A recent scientific report appeared to reassure the world that not everyone in China is dwelling on that country's muscle-flexing space program or the intractability of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Some Chinese, it suggested, are focused on less tendentious things. Take archaeologists, the subject...

EDITORIALS

Oct 23, 2005

A bad rap for a subtle season

Have you noticed the light changing? It's the best thing about autumn. In midsummer, and even well into September, the sun bleaches everything in sight. The sky will be milky-white, rarely blue, even on a cloudless day. There's a hard, brassy shimmer to the air.

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Oct 23, 2005

Best to dig deep and study language from its roots

By Roger Pulvers

W hen I was growing up in Los Angeles during the 1950s, the L.A. County Board of Education decided that the children of the city should learn Spanish. While the language was not made compulsory, it was taught to us regularly with the usual visual aids, such as pictures of elephants, giraffes, mountains...

COMMENTARY

Oct 23, 2005

Look for change next year

By Gregory Clark

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's determination to visit Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni Shrine needs to be seen in the perspective. The visit was not necessarily, as Beijing and Seoul seem to believe, a final proof of prime-ministerial evil.

COMMENTARY

Oct 22, 2005

How not to manage U.S.-Singapore ties

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES -- Perhaps the last thing that the well-run city-state of Singapore needs is for some outside columnist to defend it. Among the many natural-born rhetorical defenses available on this amazing island is the redoubtable Lee Kuan Yew. Even at 82, the founding prime minister of modern Singapore...

EDITORIALS

Oct 22, 2005

Leveling the finance playing field

A review of the nation's eight government-affiliated financial institutions is gaining momentum in response to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's drive to abolish, integrate or privatize them. Shortly after Mr. Koizumi took power in 2001, he included the reform of those institutions in his "reform without...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.

How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan

By Megha Wadhwa

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

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