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COMMENTARY

Dec 6, 2004

Japan's response to threats

By Hugh Cortazzi

LONDON -- The appearance of a Chinese nuclear-powered submarine in Japanese coastal waters Nov. 10 underlined a potential threat to Japanese security.

COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE

Dec 6, 2004

Battle looms over Supreme Court justices

By Bob Keefe

WASHINGTON -- The recently announced illness of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist confirms the prospect of turnover soon at the court. Rehnquist turned 80 last month and seems to have a serious, debilitating cancer. He continues to be absent from the court.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 6, 2004

No witch hunt for North Koreans in China

By David Wall

BEIJING -- North Korean "refugees," economic migrants or defectors -- take your pick -- in China have been in the news again. Staged video film of dozens of them storming embassies in Beijing has been circulated globally by South Korean and Western political activists who arrange for these incidents....

EDITORIALS

Dec 5, 2004

What's up with Phinnaeus and Hazel?

A merica doesn't have princesses in the sense that Japan and Britain and a few other countries do. But it has its princess substitutes, from presidential first daughters such as Caroline Kennedy and Chelsea Clinton to a handful of the nicer Hollywood actresses. Just as with real princesses, there is...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 5, 2004

Canberra's free trade polka

By Alan Goodall

SYDNEY -- The convening of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations with Australia and New Zealand at ASEAN's meeting in the Laotian capital last week was a landmark for the region's push toward greater security and economic growth. It also started a move toward a free trade area that will...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 5, 2004

EU frittering away influence in Korea

By Glyn Ford

BRUSSELS -- One of the last best hopes for securing a solution to the current crisis on the Korean Peninsula is being killed by U.S. politicking and EU penny- pinching. U.S. neoconservatives are determined to drive North Korea into a corner, while the European Union bickers over "small change"' rather...

EDITORIALS

Dec 4, 2004

Asia takes a historic step

Historians may well look back at this week's summit of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and call it the first real move toward creating a regional economic group that unites all of Asia. It pushed the political agenda forward as well, signaling a shift in the ASEAN-Plus-Three (Japan,...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 4, 2004

Knives out for Kofi Annan

By Ramesh Thakur

One would think that the cheerleaders for waging war on Saddam Hussein's Iraq, on the thoroughly discredited grounds that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, would have retreated into a period of quiet introspection. In fact, it is as difficult to find any trace of embarrassment, humility or...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 4, 2004

Brutality pays poorly in interrogation

By Richard Halloran

HONOLULU -- After a Japanese soldier named Shuji Ishii was taken prisoner by American Marines on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II, he expected the worse, including being put to death. Instead, he wrote later in a memoir, he was astonished to find himself in a sanitary hospital and to be given...

EDITORIALS

Dec 3, 2004

Lack of self-cleansing power

Former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto has indirectly admitted his involvement in a dubious flow of political funds to the faction led by himself. Going back on his previous denial that a 100 million yen check was accepted, Mr. Hashimoto said "it (the alleged acceptance) probably is a fact."

COMMENTARY

Dec 3, 2004

China's foray south of the U.S. border

By Frank Ching

HONG KONG -- Chinese President Hu Jintao's two-week foray into Latin America in November shows the extent to which China's economic development over the last quarter century has strengthened its foreign policy outreach.

COMMENTARY

Dec 2, 2004

Risks to secular government

By Ronald Meinardus

MANILA -- In the Cold War era, the global confrontation was basically ideological. Two radically different socio-political blueprints were pitted against each other: democracy and capitalism on one side, one-party-rule and communism on the other. The opponents, then, were two superpowers and their allies...

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

Looking ahead to Yokohama’s Green × Expo 2027

Looking ahead to Yokohama’s Green × Expo 2027

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