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EDITORIALS
Jul 31, 2006

Sympathy for a racehorse

The world's compassion is notoriously quirky. Just consider where it has been directed over the past couple of months, a period as replete with tragedy and disaster as any in recent memory. Another lethal tsunami struck Indonesia. The sectarian slaughter in Iraq worsened, with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki...
EDITORIALS
Jun 4, 2006

Cloaks of invisibility, new and old

Learned scientific articles generally don't make a big splash in the world beyond academe. Many of us out here can't understand them, and we're much too busy and distracted to bother trying. But two articles in this month's issue of the journal Science have made headlines that are capturing even children's...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Mar 27, 2006

Ishibashi's 'alternative reality' for Japan

NEW YORK -- A reader of my Jan. 30 column ("Another side to Japanese-Korean history") wrote to comment and, in the course of subsequent correspondence, wondered about an "alternative reality" or a "what if" in Japan's history before World War II. He had in mind, in particular, "Secretary (Cordell) Hull's...
COMMENTARY
Jan 23, 2006

The feud can end anytime

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi should realize that he holds the key to settling the growing discord with China even as Beijing adds fuel to the fire by urging the Japanese government to restrict news media reports on the alleged security threat posed by China.
EDITORIALS
Jan 22, 2006

Something wiki this way comes

'W ikipedia": Anyone looking for information online in the last few years is bound to have come across this funny word. Type any search term into Google, and a Wikipedia entry will probably pop up somewhere on the first page or two. On "Japan," for example, the Wikipedia entry comes in an impressive...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 18, 2005

Robotic journalists do their 'job' covering tragic deaths of girls

In a period of less than three weeks, three elementary school-age girls were recently murdered in different areas of Japan. The nature of the crimes guaranteed extensive coverage, but their occurrence in quick succession stretched the resources of the news media beyond its normal capabilities.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 15, 2005

Aussies preparing for worst

SYDNEY -- Tough new antiterrorist laws will soon give troops shoot-to-kill authority when patrolling Australian streets in anticipation of a terrorist attack. But the change will come only after the Australian public has agonized over a claimed loss of civil liberties.
COMMENTARY
Sep 26, 2005

Underwhelmed in Okinawa

Most of the Japanese political community is all agog over the overwhelming victory of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party in the Sept. 11 Lower House election. Okinawa Prefecture is the exception.
JAPAN
Jun 17, 2005

Journalist did not defame expert in tainted blood fiasco: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court overturned a high court decision Thursday, ruling that noted journalist Yoshiko Sakurai did not defame a late hemophilia expert in her writings about the infection of hemophiliacs with HIV from tainted blood products.
BUSINESS
Apr 22, 2005

Data show China trade is vital

Japan's customs-cleared trade with China exceeded its trade with the United States for the first time in fiscal 2004, underlining the interdependence between the two economies, Finance Ministry statistics showed Thursday.
EDITORIALS
Nov 2, 2004

The world holds its breath

A mericans go to the polls on Tuesday, with President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry running neck in neck down to the wire. Once again it is an election too close to call -- a reminder of the 2000 race, whose final outcome hung in the balance for 36 days because of disputes over vote counting. One...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 14, 2004

Rowdy Chinese fans raise some Olympic-size questions

HONOLULU -- Nasty outbursts against a Japanese sports team in China have raised worrisome questions about Beijing's fitness to host the 2008 Olympic Games, which China's rulers intend to be a showcase for the progress of their nation, much as the Games were for Japan in 1964 and for South Korea in 1988....
COMMENTARY
Jun 28, 2004

Treading too softly on SOFA

In April, an epoch-making event occurred in the history of the Japan-U.S. security alliance. Two Diet members of the governing Liberal Democratic Party met with U.S. State and Defense Department officials to ask Washington to consider overhauling the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 12, 2004

Conviction, vision led Reagan to greatness

WASHINGTON -- A great man has died, moving a piece of the present into history. It is a history that many of us have been part of and that shapes our future.
COMMENTARY / World
May 17, 2004

Sugar dispute sours Australian politics

SYDNEY -- Who could have guessed that sugar would sour Australian politics? That's just what is happening as the Howard government gears up for its toughest national election yet.
COMMENTARY
Apr 26, 2004

A laudable Yasukuni ruling

In a landmark ruling April 7, the Fukuoka District Court ruled that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine, the memorial to Japan's war dead, contravened the constitutional principle of keeping state and religion separate. The court, however, dismissed the plaintiffs' demand for...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Apr 22, 2003

Media hounds muzzle selves

A few years ago, I was lucky enough to be sent on a media junket to Sri Lanka.
COMMENTARY
Mar 4, 2003

Don't give up on alternatives

Nearly three years have passed since Junichiro Koizumi made his dashing debut as prime minister with an unprecedentedly high public approval rate of 80 percent, after declaring somewhat self-contradictorily that he would not hesitate to destroy his own Liberal Democratic Party to attain his reform goals....
COMMENTARY
Feb 18, 2003

Japan must shift to regional autonomy

Elections are in Japan's forecast for this year -- nationwide local elections in April, the contest for the Liberal Democratic Party presidency in October and perhaps a general election for the House of Representative sometime in between -- with a strong possibility of political turbulence along the...
COMMENTARY
Feb 17, 2003

Fears of 'anti-Americanism' overblown

MANILA -- In 1996 Samuel Huntington published his epochal work "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order." In it, he argues that, since the demise of the Cold War, cultural divides have become the focal points of international conflicts. Judging from recent editorials in American and...
EDITORIALS
Oct 20, 2002

All the news, period

Ever since news first met the Internet, informed observers have been predicting the death of print newspapers. When it didn't happen after people began retrieving their daily news with the help of Internet search engines, the sages said it would happen after the major newspapers launched their own online...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 9, 2002

Japanese tradition that violates privacy rights

The current Self-Defense Forces scandal provides a glimpse into the mechanics of how such stories get reported. It appears that an insider at the Maritime Self-Defense Force sent information to the Mainichi Shimbun about personal data that an officer was compiling on people who made requests to the MSDF...
COMMENTARY
May 17, 2002

Japan at its inconsistent worst

Japan's overheated reaction to the May 8 North Korean refugee incident at the Japanese consulate-general in Shenyang, northeast China, is worrying.
JAPAN
May 4, 2002

Group pays respects to slain reporter

KOBE -- Police officials, detectives and private citizens visited on Friday the Asahi Shimbun's Hanshin Bureau in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, to lay flowers and offer prayers for a reporter who was gunned down there 15 years ago by an unknown assailant.
JAPAN
May 3, 2002

NPA regrets inability to solve journalist's murder

The chief of the National Police Agency said he regrets police have been unable to make an arrest before the statute of limitations for the 1987 murder of an Asahi Shimbun reporter was to expire at midnight Thursday.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 28, 2002

Stop the presses

At 7 p.m. on Oct. 11, 1946, it was quiet in The Japan Times newsroom in central Tokyo. The deadline for the next day's first edition had passed, and day-shift editors were ready to pack up and leave. Then, with no prior warning, a surprise visitor appeared in their midst.
EDITORIALS
Apr 28, 2002

Jostling in the blogosphere

Meanwhile, as the insects endure, humans keep blathering -- and finding new and ever more independent ways to broadcast their blather. By comparison with some of these, editorials -- the anonymously authored opinions of official media organizations -- are as old as Mantophasmatodea. No, to approach the...

Longform

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