I'm very sad to learn that the Counterpoint column by professor Jeff Kingston of Temple University Japan won't appear any longer in The Japan Times.
It has long been the most coveted column for me in the newspaper.
Only one of his many instructive articles that I've learned much from was the piece I came across in the Aug. 20 issue.
He wrote: "Koike embraces right-wing political positions, visits Yasukuni Shrine every year and once belonged to Japan Conference (Nippon Kaigi), an elitist right-wing lobby organization that wields considerable political influence in the corridors of power. Koike also threatened to close an ethnic Korean school in Tokyo during her gubernatorial campaign." He also wrote, "Abe and Koike share the same ideological bandwidth."
I'm a 71-year-old subscriber of the Asahi Shimbun, which is now providing me with 52 pages of information every day. In addition, I'm reading the Nikkan Gendai, an afternoon paper with some 40 pages. And I visit a public library a couple of times a week and read a variety of dailies and weeklies. Yet I don't remember seeing anywhere such important pieces of information about Koike.
I'll miss Kingston's articles greatly. And my real hope is that his excellent contributions will reappear in The Japan Times in the near future.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.