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May 06, 2024
 

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COUNTERPOINT

Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 23, 2016
Asia's new normal — now made in China?
As China's President Xi Jinping asserts a new normal in Asia — one featuring a more belligerent Chinese presence — he is digging a deep diplomatic hole. The backlash in Asia may have been guarded, but the region's minnows are getting feistier.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 16, 2016
China: more hegemon than bogeyman?
Jeffrey Wasserstrom's perceptive new book, "Eight Juxtapositions: China Through Imperfect Analogies," presents some unlikely comparisons that are designed to challenge perceptions about China. Wasserstrom, a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, acknowledges flaws in his analogies — which include an exploration of the similarities between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Pope Francis — but makes a persuasive case that they are useful in making sense of contemporary China. He draws eyebrow-raising parallels between Japan in Manchuria and China in Tibet, and links these incursions with America's delusional intervention in Iraq — a comparison that sheds new light on a debacle that plunged the Middle East into its current maelstrom.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 9, 2016
How rights and liberties may be downsized under the LDP
During a recent TV program, the vice president of the Liberal Democratic Party, Masahiko Komura, insisted "there is zero possibility" that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would revise war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution even if the ruling coalition wins a two-thirds majority in the upcoming Upper House elections. But why believe him? Abe has made clear his intentions of promoting constitutional revision. Until he publicly pledges not to do so, voters are right to be wary.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 2, 2016
What are Shinzo Abe's real three arrows?
In his campaign for the upcoming Upper House elections, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pussyfooting around his plans to revise the Constitution. He is keeping his cards close to his chest because polls have shown that voters oppose constitutional change. Instead, Abe is calling on voters to keep the faith with Abenomics, despite widespread consensus that it has been a dismal flop and has failed to revive the Japanese economy or improve household welfare.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 25, 2016
Shinzo Abe's bait-and-switch campaign strategy
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is doing it again: campaigning on Abenomics while distracting voters' attention away from his real agenda. When he got elected in 2012, Abe ran on Abenomics and kept his revisionist political and historical agenda under wraps, knowing that it does not resonate with voters. He then passed the unpopular secrecy law. In 2014, he called a snap election and again campaigned on Abenomics, diverting attention from his plans to lift constitutional constraints on Japan's military. Subsequently, in 2015, he signed on to new U.S.-Japan defense guidelines that expand what Japan is prepared to do militarily to support its allies. That same year he pushed through enabling legislation despite negligible public support — in the form of massive demonstrations and polls indicating majority opposition to his plans — for his goal of overturning Japan's postwar laws on security policy. Subsequently citizens have filed a series of lawsuits nationwide against the legislation, arguing that it violates their constitutional rights.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 18, 2016
Culture of fear lingers in war-traumatized Sri Lanka
Civil war engulfed Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009, with a death toll estimated by the U.N. at up to 100,000. The war was fought between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, aka Tamil Tigers, and the Sri Lankan state.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 11, 2016
Abenomics' failure and the curse of 'Japanization'
The word "Japanization" refers to Japan's prolonged stagnation — a malady that was on everyone's mind at the recent G-7 summit. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made the right call in postponing the planned tax hike, but the feeble opposition can be forgiven for pouncing on his abrupt volte-face, which is a tacit admission that Abenomics is a colossal failure in terms of overcoming Japanization. There really is no way to sugarcoat the bad news about the negligible impact of Abe's eponymous "three arrows" of monetary easing, fiscal spending and will-o'-the wisp structural reforms.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 4, 2016
Under Abe, Japan gets left behind at G-7 summit
For Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the best thing about the recent G-7 Ise-Shima summit was that it gave him cover to wriggle out of a planned tax increase. He could pretend postponing the tax increase is a statesman-like concession to boosting global growth, rather than a way to pander to voters in the upcoming Upper House elections. For those who insist that the tax postponement signals the failure of Abenomics, Abe's riposte is "The global economy ate my homework!"
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 28, 2016
Understanding anti-base sentiment in Okinawa
The recent murder of a 20-year-old Okinawan woman by a civilian employee of the U.S. Kadena Air Base on Okinawa has inflamed local antipathy toward the U.S. military's presence. Sadly, this horrific crime fits into a larger pattern of sexual violence that has become all too familiar to Okinawans and stokes anti-base sentiment.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 21, 2016
Japan's cybersecurity upgrade — too little, too late?
The Internet facilitates rapid data-sharing and increased communication between individuals, firms and government entities. This generates significant risks but, for most of the 2000s, Japan did not take commensurate countermeasures. The complacent attitude toward information technology security has persisted in Japan too long due to a combination of ignorance, wishful thinking and the belief that cybersecurity is only a cost, rather than a prudent investment.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 14, 2016
G-7 venue preparation shouldn't deter Mie tourists
With world leaders gathering at the G-7 Ise-Shima summit on May 26 and 27, the international spotlight will briefly focus on picturesque Mie Prefecture and its considerable charms. For residents of the prefecture, however, this moment in the spotlight apparently won't be brief enough; a recent Kyodo poll indicated most of them would rather the G-7 leaders meet somewhere else.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 7, 2016
Diabetes emerges as Japan's hidden scourge
Reading a review of British writer Bee Wilson's "First Bite: How We Learn to Eat" in the London Review of Books, I stumbled on an astonishing figure: 4 million people in the U.K. have diabetes. An unhealthy diet and increasingly sedentary lifestyle have taken their toll, causing a 65 percent surge in cases in the past decade alone. Treating this epidemic is costing the National Health Service an estimated £1 million (roughly ¥155 million) an hour.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 30, 2016
Japan's meek media kowtows to the government
Last week I compared the Catholic Church in Boston and Japan's "nuclear village" of atomic-power advocates — two powerful institutions that stifled embarrassing revelations for some time. The Oscar-winning film "Spotlight" depicts the comeuppance of the church hierarchy after investigative reporters from The Boston Globe broke the story about pedophile priests in 2002, including how the church chose to reassign them to other unsuspecting dioceses where they continued to prey on children.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 23, 2016
Ebb tide for press freedoms in Shinzo Abe's Japan
A perfect storm is descending on freedom of the press in Japan: The country just sank to No. 72 in the global press freedom ranking issued Wednesday by Reporters Without Borders, down from No. 11 in 2010. And David Kaye, the U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, gave a press conference in Tokyo on Tuesday decrying censorship, weak legal protections and media intimidation in Japan — consequences of various media-muzzling initiatives by the Shinzo Abe administration. It also emerged that one Liberal Democratic Party member is the designated Internet attack dog who goes after foreign journalists for criticizing Abe, while in Sekai magazine, ousted NHK anchor Hiroko Kuniya talked about Japan's unfavorable media culture that inhibits robust journalism. Abe's press-freedom black eye comes just as "Spotlight" opens in theaters, and a month before G-7 leaders arrive.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 16, 2016
Obama has unfinished business in Hiroshima
Barack Obama will attend the G-7 Ise-Shima summit of leading industrial nations in Mie Prefecture next month, sparking speculation that the U.S. President might venture to Hiroshima to pay respects at the Peace Memorial Park.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 9, 2016
Are Japan's counterterrorism forces really ready?
When an escaped zebra was chased down by police in Gifu Prefecture last month and died after being shot with a tranquilizer and falling into a pool, I couldn't help but think of the drills Tokyo's Ueno Zoo has conducted depicting the escape scenario.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 2, 2016
Japan's inescapable 'comfort women' problem
Tokyo and Seoul may believe they have resolved the "comfort women" problem after signing a joint agreement in December, but it's wishful thinking and confronts mounting evidence that this diplomatic deceit is already unraveling and falls short of the grand gesture needed to restore dignity to these victims or indeed Japan.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 26, 2016
Tepco executives get a taste of citizens' wrath
Three Tokyo Electric Power Co. executives are now facing criminal prosecution for negligence in failing to anticipate a monster tsunami that cut off electricity and inundated back-up emergency generators, causing a cessation of cooling in the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant reactors that precipitated three meltdowns in March 2011. How were they to know?
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 19, 2016
The pretext of counterterrorism covers many sins
The Japanese government's track record on respecting civil liberties and the rule of law is suspect, as I detailed in last week's Counterpoint.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 12, 2016
Counterterrorism and liberties on collision course
The continuing standoff between Apple and the FBI over data stored on an iPhone that belonged to the alleged perpetrators of the San Bernadino terrorist attacks highlights the frictions between protecting civil liberties and maintaining security. The USA Patriot Act has drawn widespread condemnation in liberal circles because it grants law-enforcement agencies sweeping powers that pose a threat to the constitutional rights of Americans in the name of protecting them from terrorist attacks.
Japan says Biden's description of nation as xenophobic is 'unfortunate'
The National Diet building in Tokyo
G7 eyes plan on U.S.-led $50 billion aid package for Ukraine
A local resident visits the Lychakiv cemetery in Lviv, Ukraine, on Thursday. The U.S. is in talks with close partners to lead a group of allies that would give as much as $50 billion in aid to Ukraine.
Japan drops to 70th in press freedom rankings
A businessman reads a newspaper outside a train station in Tokyo.
Japan’s record-low children population weighs on growth
The number of children 14 years old or younger fell for the 43rd straight year to around 14.01 million as of April 1.
Biden calls ally Japan ‘xenophobic’ along with rivals China and Russia
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks in Syracuse, New York, on April 25.
'Monster' Inoue ready to tear down Luis Nery in title defense at Tokyo Dome
Naoya Inoue (left) and Luis Nery following a pre-fight news conference in Yokohama on Saturday, two days ahead of their super bantamweight title fight.
Debate on constitutional revision at a standstill despite Kishida's pledges
With less than two months left before the conclusion of the current session of parliament, any possibility that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida can deliver constitutional reform before the end of his term as Liberal Democratic Party president in late September, as he has promised, appears remote.
Sapporo court ruling on Ainu fishing rights presents tough questions
A traditional Ainu preserved food called <i>satchep</i> (dried fish) being made at the government-run National Ainu Museum and Park, nicknamed Upopoy, in the town of Shiraoi, Hokkaido, on Dec. 25. The Sapporo District Court ruled last month that the Raporo Ainu Nation's rights as an Indigenous people did not extend to having an inherent right to fish for commercial reasons.
With eye on China, defense chiefs agree to bolster interoperability
From left: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Australian defense chief Richard Marles, Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara and Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro hold a joint news conference in Honolulu on Thursday.
Yellow sand allergy: A health issue made worse by climate change
A screenshot of the Meteorological Agency's satellite image of clouds and yellow sand (in pink) on Sunday.

Podcast

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Longform

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