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COMMENTARY

Mar 20, 2002

Uncertain future for Koizumi

By Kenzo Uchida

In politics, as the saying goes, all is darkness just a step down the road. How right they are. When the administration of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was inaugurated at the end of April 2001, it enjoyed a stellar Cabinet support rating of 80 percent, and the prime minister himself was hugely popular....

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 20, 2002

Grim outlook for Asia's final frontier of biodiversity

By Cesar Chelala

NEW YORK -- Since brutally assuming direct power in 1988, the Myanmar military has been conducting a sustained assault on the environment in one of Asia's richest and least-developed lands. The country's ecosystem, which ranges from tropical reefs along the Bay of Bengal to the mountains of the Himalayas,...

EDITORIALS

Mar 20, 2002

A blessing in disguise for Mr. Kato

Corruption scandals have forced two influential members of the Liberal Democratic Party to leave the party in rapid succession. On Monday Mr. Koichi Kato, former LDP secretary general, resigned to take responsibility for the arrest of his one-time top aide, Mr. Saburo Sato, on charges of tax evasion....

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 20, 2002

Drain the swamp that breeds terrorism

By Bruce Stokes

This week U.S. President George W. Bush meets in Monterrey, Mexico with 50 other heads of state to discuss financing for Third World development. Last week, the president announced that he would ask Congress to set aside $5 billion for a special development-aid fund. This aid will be on top of the 10...

EDITORIALS

Mar 19, 2002

Nation-building vs. military goals

Half a year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, President George W. Bush's war on terrorism appears to be entering a more complex and difficult phase. U.S. troops have mounted a major ground offensive in Afghanistan, while a special forces team is helping fight Muslim militants...

COMMENTARY

Mar 19, 2002

Class struggle joins Marx in the dustbin

By Frank Ching

HONG KONG -- Last Wednesday, a top official declared that, as a result of the market economy, "people's jobs and status keep changing" in China today, and there are "differences and contradictions between communities, between industries and between regions." These remarks by Li Ruihuan, China's fourth-ranking...

COMMENTARY

Mar 19, 2002

Tough times await Musharraf

By Farhan Bokhari

ISLAMABAD -- In reaching out to Japan last week in his maiden visit there, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf created the impression that he is genuinely trying to turn his country around. And during his recent visit to the United States, U.S. President George W. Bush hailed him as a visionary...

EDITORIALS

Mar 18, 2002

Steeling for a fight

During the Vietnam War, a peculiar strand of U.S. logic was revealed when an official argued that a village had to be destroyed to save it from the North Vietnamese. A version of that tortured thinking has been resurrected recently as U.S. officials have struggled to justify President George W. Bush's...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 18, 2002

Free trade carries a price

By Michael R. Czinkota

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President George W. Bush's decision to impose tariffs on steel imports into the United States has been decried as a politically motivated and economically ruinous move that marks the end of free trade and initiates a battle in the World Trade Organization.

COMMENTARY / JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL ERA

Mar 18, 2002

'Gerontocrat' academicians with myopia

By Jean-pierre Lehmann

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- After Harvard Professor Ezra Vogel's famous book "Japan as Number One" appeared in 1979, the West experienced a "learning from Japan" boom. I fully participated in this movement in both of its manifestations: publications, seminars etc., and the establishment of university Japanese...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 18, 2002

Ban pol-bureaucrat contacts

By Takeshi Sasaki

The alleged meddling in Foreign Ministry affairs by Liberal Democratic lawmaker Muneo Suzuki has stirred debate on rules governing relations between politicians and bureaucrats. The problem of "excessive interference" has been widely reported as highly abnormal, but I doubt whether that's so. In present-day...

EDITORIALS

Mar 17, 2002

Strategies for saving precious lives

The United Nations is not loved by everyone, nor does it always do everything right. Even when it is not being controversial, it often appears ineffectual or, worse yet, boring. There are only so many conferences, forums, summits, accords, agreements, understandings, commitments, resolutions and declarations...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

In 2020, 38% of all households were single-person. That figure is projected to rise to 44.3% by 2050.

The rise of AI companionship in a lonely Japan

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after

Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after

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