NEW YORK -- By way of criticizing Taro Aso as "Japan's Offensive Foreign Minister," a Feb. 13 New York Times editorial came up with a sweeping condemnation of the Japanese and their society by asserting that "public discourse in Japan and modern history lessons in its schools have never properly come to terms with the country's responsibility" for its past deeds.

Actually, it's a mantra the Times has created for its own use, and what it says "the rest of the world knows" is, in fact, nothing more than what the Times chooses to know. One trembles to think what it would do if it had to pick up a little more complex issue related to Japan's past.

I recently translated into English two women poets of Korean ancestry in Japan, Cheon Mihye and Park Kyong Mi. When I referred to them as "Korean-Japanese," an American friend gently suggested that the proper term is "Zainichi." He is knowledgeable on such matters. But suppose the Times decides to touch on this odd identification of an ethnic group. Will it go beyond railing against the Japanese for their shameless discrimination of Koreans? After all, on its own, zainichi simply means "being in Japan," as in Zainichi Beikoku Taishikan, the U.S. Embassy in Japan.