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COMMENTARY
Apr 27, 2003

Bush faces long-term burden of triumph

NEW DELHI -- Aggression pays, and naked aggression pays handsomely. That may sound like the moral of America's occupation of Iraq after a faster-than-anticipated military triumph that threatens to herald a more muscular U.S. foreign policy. That moral may be reinforced by the way the Bush administration...
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE EXTRA
Apr 27, 2003

Japan rugby needs to act now before it is too late

For followers of Japanese rugby, the last few weeks have not made for happy reading.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 27, 2003

A shorter leash on China's Communists

LONDON -- Governments and political parties habitually find it hard to admit to having made mistakes. Ministers and party officials who resign after getting things wrong cover their tracks with talk of seeking new horizons or spending more time with their families. The more authoritarian a regime, the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 23, 2003

Looking history straight in the face

"I want to live, I do not want to perish gracefully in battle," declares Yamato (Tatsuya Fujiwara), the young hero of Hideki Noda's "Oil."
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 13, 2003

From polarization to U.N. reconstruction

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- A future historian will almost certainly view the current tragedy in Iraq more calmly than so many of today's analysts and commentators. As the drama is screened from sophisticated command rooms to the remotest television-equipped hut in a far corner of the world, emotions prevail...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 13, 2003

Chinese deserve grown-up party leaders

SEOUL -- The leaders of the Chinese Communist Party want the world to believe that the government they control is fit to be accepted as a full-fledged mature member of the global community. But is it? There have to be some doubts.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 31, 2003

Posturing of 'truths' failed to derail U.N.

NEW YORK -- One of the first casualties of any war -- although often overlooked -- is language. Perhaps this has never been more true than in the present war against Iraq. Diplomacy, we are told, "failed." The United Nations, we are told, has become "irrelevant." The attack against Iraq, we are told,...
COMMENTARY
Mar 31, 2003

Folly of liberation by force

The Pentagon calls the U.S. military campaign in Iraq "Operation Iraqi Freedom." This is clearly intended to reflect U.S.-British justification of their attempt to overthrow the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and "liberate" Iraq without a United Nations resolution.
JAPAN
Mar 18, 2003

Delegates press severity of African water situation

Participants at a special session of the ongoing World Water Forum voiced satisfaction Monday that Africa's water crisis is firmly on the agenda of the Group of Eight industrial nations.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 12, 2003

Preparing news reporters for surviving a nightmare

As the world stands on the brink of what could be the most dangerous war ever, there is one question facing those of us in the news media: How far should a journalist go to get the story? With rogue groups in parts of the world appearing to regard journalists as legitimate targets, the inherently unsafe...
JAPAN
Mar 6, 2003

UNESCO wants water action

UNESCO will seek concrete action from the upcoming World Water Forum in western Japan following years of failure to seriously address global water goals, the director of the body's World Water Assessment Program said Wednesday.
EDITORIALS
Mar 3, 2003

Price of backing U.S. against Iraq

A pall of gloom hangs over the world economy as a war looms with Iraq. If war does come, world oil prices will go higher, crimping growth and investment worldwide. That much is fairly clear. What is not clear is just how much the price of petroleum will rise and how hard the global economy will be hit....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 26, 2003

Freed jazz

Musicians can be extraordinary in so many different ways. John Coltrane was on a radical quest for enlightenment until the day he died. Bill Evans could voice chords in ways no one else ever imagined. Like a cat, Theolonius Monk could step off an edge and always land on his feet. And Miles Davis? You...
COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE
Feb 22, 2003

Antiwar fever rises as the economy sinks

WASHINGTON -- Two big questions have dominated Washington this week. When will this horrible, cold winter end? And when will the war in Iraq begin? While they are different subjects with different consequences, they are getting about equal time in the capital's conversation content.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 9, 2003

Golf: a sport that mirrors the nation

Forget indicators such as unemployment levels and interest rates; there's no simpler way to chart Japan's economic well-being than by tracing the ebb and flow of the popularity of golf.
COMMENTARY
Feb 6, 2003

Misperceptions fuel Korean crisis

BRUSSELS -- The crisis in Iraq overshadows everything. Yet far more dangerous is the Korean crisis. At worse, the Iraqi crisis will lead to a conventional war with tens of thousands of casualties. In contrast, millions of lives could be at risk in the Korean crisis -- triggered by U.S. revelations that...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Feb 4, 2003

Service firms in Darwinian struggle to get to top of food chain

Global food service giants are making inroads into the nation's office and hospital cafeterias, triggering mergers and acquisitions in the world's second-largest institutional meal market.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 27, 2003

China leaves India in the dust

NEW DELHI -- While I was in India recently, the first phase of an underground railway was inaugurated in New Delhi. At about the same time, in Shanghai, the world's first magnetic levitation train was inaugurated between the airport and the city. This is a fitting metaphor for the two countries. China...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / JET STREAM
Jan 27, 2003

The god of small things

Nanotechnology researcher Istvan Varga is unique among the more than 6,400 participants in this year's JET program. While the majority work as assistant English teachers in Japanese public schools, the 34-year-old Hungarian-born electrical engineer spends his days exploring the secrets of magnetism....
EDITORIALS
Jan 22, 2003

Sumo needs a clear vision

Yokozuna Takanohana has finally bowed out of the dohyo. Looking back over his active career, he certainly made spectacular achievements. There can be no objections to his being described as one of the all-time great grand champions of sumo.
EDITORIALS
Jan 13, 2003

In the year 20, or maybe 33, A.I.

Maybe you missed it amid the noisy merriment of the New Year, but Jan. 1 marked a birthday worth observing. Twenty years ago on New Year's Day, the Internet as we know it was born, ushering in the era of the World Wide Web -- the closest humanity may ever get to a version of J.R.R. Tolkien's mythic global...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 29, 2002

Modernization model for Islamic nations

HONOLULU -- With all due respect to his office, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia got it wrong when he suggested in Tokyo in mid-December that the Japanese help Americans and Europeans to understand Islam.
COMMENTARY
Dec 21, 2002

Asia can learn from Europe

SINGAPORE -- Ever since Asian policymakers and analysts began thinking about their part of the world as a collective of nations -- as a "region" -- they have made one thing clear: Asia is a unique place and Europe's experience on this matter just does not apply. That thinking has dominated discussions...
SOCCER / World cup
Dec 4, 2002

Ronaldo rises again

YOKOHAMA -- In case there was ever any doubt that it is the best team in the world, Real Madrid made it official on Tuesday night in Yokohama, beating South American champion Olimpia of Paraguay 2-0 to capture the Toyota Cup in front of a crowd of 66,070.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 9, 2002

Price is right for 'carbon fund' investments now

It would be wise for Japanese firms to invest in so-called carbon funds soon so they can meet greenhouse gas emissions targets more cheaply and on schedule, according to Ken Newcombe, manager of one such fund run by the World Bank.
COMMENTARY
Nov 4, 2002

Economy linked to security

The fight against terrorism emerged as the top issue at the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, whose original aim was to promote sustainable economic growth. This reflected awareness among participants at the summit -- held Oct. 26-27 in Los Cabos, Mexico -- that terrorism affects...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Nov 3, 2002

Terror in our own backyard

A key phrase in my recent e-mail exchanges has been, "The world has gone crazy." The hostage drama in Moscow; the shooting spree in the Washington, D.C. area; the bombing of two nightclubs in Bali; the Finnish teenager who blew up himself and six other people in a suburban shopping mall; the killing...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Oct 25, 2002

Building juggernaut hijacks tourist plan

Japan's new tourism drive, designed to double the number of foreign visitors to the country by 2007, should send a shiver down the spine of conservationists and environmentalists.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Oct 19, 2002

T.W. Sudhakar

"Namaste" is the Indian greeting, traditionally used with a prayerful undercurrent. "Namaste India 2002" is a daylong Tokyo program that, for the last 20 years, has been offering Indian greetings to the people of Japan. Sponsored and supported by several influential organizations of both countries, the...

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan