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COMMENTARY
Mar 18, 2001

Solving the democracy deficit

LONDON -- Transparency and accountability are the buzzwords of the age. No gathering of policy experts or seminar on public affairs is complete without demands all round that the institutions of modern government, both national and global, especially global ones, should become more accountable and open...
COMMENTARY
Mar 16, 2001

Pointless summits as Mori clings to power

I have worked as a political journalist for over half a century. I started out covering Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida's Cabinet for a Japanese newspaper. As a rookie reporter, I befriended the late Shintaro Abe, who shared the same beat with me. Later he turned to politics when he became secretary to...
JAPAN
Mar 16, 2001

Obituary: Mimpei Sugiura

Mimpei Sugiura, a scholar on Italian Renaissance literature, died of a stroke Wednesday evening at a hospital in the town of Tahara, Aichi Prefecture. He was 87.
BUSINESS
Mar 14, 2001

LDP policy chief calls for extra budget

Shizuka Kamei, policy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said Tuesday that a supplementary budget should be compiled to boost the economy.
JAPAN
Mar 14, 2001

Nonaka tipped to lead LDP without rocking party boat

With Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's resignation imminent, observers predict his most likely successor may be ruling party heavyweight Hiromu Nonaka, a man many say is unlikely to pull the nation out of its current political and economic quagmire.
COMMENTARY
Mar 11, 2001

Regionalism threatens global prosperity

LOS ANGELES -- Not many prominent Americans saw the huge cloud forming over globalization as early as did then-President Bill Clinton. After an address on the subject at last year's World Economic Forum in Davos -- in which he virtually pleaded with well-heeled corporate execs to put themselves in the...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 10, 2001

Let China set the human-rights debate

One of the least attractive rituals of spring -- skirmishing between Beijing and Washington over Chinese human-rights practices -- is already under way. The first volley was fired last month with the publication of the U.S. State Department's annual human-rights report. It took Beijing to task for a...
COMMENTARY
Mar 3, 2001

No quick fixes for Japan's ills

TOKYO and LONDON -- The 17th annual meeting of the U.K.-Japan 21st Century Group -- the bilateral think tank set up by Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher way back in the '80s -- took place this year on Awaji Island in Kobe Bay, island of gods and puppets and,...
COMMENTARY
Mar 2, 2001

Mori's time is running out

There is an increasing likelihood that Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, lambasted at home and abroad as a symbol of political incompetence, will announce a decision sometime this month to step down to end the leadership crisis. This is hardly surprising, given Mori's abysmal performance since he was appointed...
MULTIMEDIA / SPORTS SCOPE
Mar 1, 2001

IOC delegates: the questions they should be asking

The International Olympic Committee has come Japan to check out Osaka's facilities for staging the 2008 Olympics.
JAPAN
Feb 11, 2001

Parties drag heels over picking candidates

CHIBA -- With just six weeks until the March 25 gubernatorial election here, the main political parties in this traditionally conservative prefecture have been uncharacteristically slow in selecting candidates.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 11, 2001

Christopher Hughes

Bath in southwestern England, his birthplace and home for his first 18 years, played its part in the makeup of Christopher Hughes. Several generations of his family have lived in that beautiful town of squares, crescents and terraces. Set in a bend of the River Avon and famed since Roman times, Bath...
JAPAN
Feb 11, 2001

Parties drag heels over picking candidates

CHIBA -- With just six weeks until the March 25 gubernatorial election here, the main political parties in this traditionally conservative prefecture have been uncharacteristically slow in selecting candidates.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Feb 11, 2001

Yeltsin and Reagan revisited

This year there were two sad anniversaries in the first week of February: two former political superstars, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Russian President Boris Yeltsin celebrated their birthdays in the shadow of severe health problems. Confined to hospital, they were unable to appreciate the cheering...
COMMENTARY
Feb 6, 2001

Civil servants are not serfs

The "shunju" (spring and autumn) column on the first page of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun often contains comments that are right on target. The Jan. 27 column commented on the sometimes arrogant and unwarranted demands made by Japanese politicians on Japanese diplomats in missions abroad.
COMMENTARY
Feb 2, 2001

End of the line for Mori?

Late last year Japan and the United States were buffeted by political turbulence. After briefly stirring fears of prolonged trouble, the chaos has died down.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 28, 2001

Challenges for South Korean democracy

SEOUL -- Nov. 28 was a black day for local autonomy in South Korea. On that date a group of lawmakers introduced a bill in the National Assembly, aimed at abolishing the democratic election of lower-level mayors. The 42 lawmakers from different political parties who presented the bill argued that the...
EDITORIALS
Jan 25, 2001

Scandal threatens the Mori Cabinet

An unfolding bribery scandal surrounding an insurance group for small business led to the resignation of Mr. Fukushiro Nukaga, state minister for economic and fiscal policy, on Tuesday. Just a week earlier, Mr. Takao Koyama, a Liberal Democratic member of the Upper House, was arrested on charges of receiving...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 22, 2001

The clock is ticking for Gen. Musharraf

ISLAMABAD -- Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler, has vowed to give Pakistanis a new life through the establishment a new political order. This promise will be put to test in the next few months.
JAPAN
Jan 21, 2001

Pregnancy, critics won't sway Ibaraki woman's re-election bid

IBARAKI, Osaka Pref. -- For Mutsuko Katsura, a 32-year old Ibaraki Municipal Assembly member, seeking a second term in office came as naturally as her desire to have a baby.
BUSINESS
Jan 19, 2001

Japan tries to get economic ball rolling without U.S.

Japan is taking its first specific initiative in getting a still embryonic -- but potentially gargantuan -- economic forum of East Asian and Latin American countries grow smoothly.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 15, 2001

Overseas Indians: Use them or lose them

Delivering the keynote address at the inaugural convention of the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin in New Delhi on Jan. 6, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee called for "a partnership among all children of Mother India so that our country can emerge as a major global player." Noting the...
JAPAN
Jan 14, 2001

Thai firms must lead reform

KOBE -- The Thai government should encourage Thailand's private sector to forward financial reform rather than create a national corporation to help banks out of the mire of massive bad loans, Thai Finance Minister Tarrin Nimmanahaeminda said Saturday.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 8, 2001

Revisionists open a front in China

NORTH CHINA AND JAPANESE EXPANSION, 1933-1937: Regional Power and the National Interest, by Marjorie Dryburgh. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000, 249 pp., 50 pounds (cloth). China is not only the world's most populous nation, but it is also one of the largest. In territorial reach, Russia and Canada alone...
JAPAN
Jan 4, 2001

Majority of business leaders not optimistic on economy

Nearly 70 out of 100 Japanese business leaders forecast slow economic growth for fiscal 2001, which begins April 1, with 31 saying a full recovery will not come until after 2002, according to a Kyodo News poll.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2001

A question of hegemony

An implicit alliance has emerged in Washington since the Cold War's end between avowedly "Wilsonian" liberals, anxious to extend American influence and federate the democracies, and unilateralist neoconservative believers in U.S. power projection, who call for American world leadership, aggressively...
COMMENTARY
Dec 16, 2000

An isolated government clings to power

The United States and Japan are plagued by political chaos. The fierce U.S. presidential race ended in victory for George W. Bush after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the recounting of disputed ballots in Florida. In Japan, a disturbingly wide gap exists between the fragile support Prime Minister Yoshiro...

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Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years