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May 06, 2024
 

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COUNTERPOINT

Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 17, 2015
Japan's public diplomacy of churlish cluelessness
Enough is enough. How dare UNESCO inscribe primary sources and a wartime video about the Nanking mayhem into global memory? I fully support the Japanese government's threats to withdraw funding from UNESCO to protest its recent decision to include a dossier submitted by China, "Documents of Nanjing Massacre," in the Memory of the World Register. Nothing could better highlight Japan's bumbling public diplomacy, or pettifogging about its shared history with Asia.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 10, 2015
Getting back to Japan's old-fashioned erotic values
The good news is that for two years in succession Tokyo has staged shunga (erotic woodblock print) exhibitions — one at Toyo Bunko in 2014 and the ongoing show at Eisei Bunko — and there doesn't appear to have been a marked surge in moral decadence or signs of civilization crumbling.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 3, 2015
Universities fending off attacks on the liberal arts
As discussed last week, in June the education ministry sent a directive to all 86 national universities in Japan, apparently calling on them to abolish or reorganize their humanities and social sciences departments.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 26, 2015
Abe government targets the liberal arts
Over the past several weeks I have received many emails from all over the world asking me if reports about government plans to pull the plug on humanities and social sciences departments at Japanese national universities are accurate or just a bad joke. At this point it's not clear exactly what the government intends.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 19, 2015
Rearranging the deck chairs on the nuclear Titanic
The International Atomic Energy Agency's recently released postmortem on the Fukushima nuclear accident of 2011 makes for grim reading and serves as a timely reminder of why the restart of the Sendai nuclear plant in Kyushu is a bad idea.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 12, 2015
Student protesters want a revitalized democracy
The large and loud crowds that regularly gather outside the Diet on Friday evenings are the result of student activists trying to do something constructive to block Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's security legislation.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 5, 2015
Students oppose Abe's assault on the Constitution
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe continues to say he will try to gain the public's understanding on the government's controversial security legislation, but there are few signs that he is winning anyone over.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 29, 2015
Trump's 'yellow peril' jibes break with GOP script
In his recent Rolling Stone essay, Matt Taibbi immortalizes the race for the Republican Party presidential nomination, as a freaky spectacle that is "like watching 17 platypuses try to mount the queen of England. You can't tear your eyes away from it."
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 22, 2015
Abe's revisionism and Japan's divided war memories
The Abe statement, approved by the Cabinet on Aug. 14, has elevated a myopic and exonerating revisionist narrative of history to Japan's official policy.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 15, 2015
Abe statement was vague in all the wrong places
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a hash of his long-anticipated statement on Friday commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 8, 2015
Abe's security laws nothing like same-sex marriage
In every intensely fought political battle there are moments of incongruous absurdity, but in the current tumult facing embattled Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, it doesn't get more ludicrous or desperate than the parallel drawn between the U.S. Supreme Court's decision affirming same-sex marriage and the constitutionality of the collective self-defense (CSD) legislation currently being debated in the Upper House of the Diet.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 1, 2015
Atomic bomb survivors nominated for Nobel prize
In this 70th year anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Swiss-based International Peace Bureau (IPB) nominated Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations) for the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize. This is Hidankyo's third such nomination by the IPB, following earlier bids in 1985 and 1994. There are about 60,000 survivors of the atomic bombings and their average age is nearly 80 years old.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 25, 2015
Rightists distort author Park Yu-ha's views on 'comfort women'
Park Yu-ha, an academic at Sejong University in Seoul, is the darling of the Japanese right because of her alleged stance on the "comfort women" system. But their cherry-picking of her writings distorts her views and twists them into support for the revisionists' vindicating and exonerating narrative.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 18, 2015
Abe's historic opportunity to reset regional relations
On Aug. 15, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will give a much-anticipated speech commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. This presents a golden opportunity to hit the reset button on regional relations and to generate momentum toward overcoming history driven tensions that plague East Asia.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 11, 2015
The politics and pitfalls of war memory and apology
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's handling of history issues during this 70th anniversary of Japan's World War II defeat came under critical scrutiny at the recent Japanese Studies Association of Australia conference hosted by La Trobe University in Melbourne.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 4, 2015
Exhuming Indonesia's horror in search for justice
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Gestapu, the murky events in Indonesia that precipitated a massacre of several hundred thousand people in 1965-66 that constitutes one of the most murderous convulsions of the 20th century.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 27, 2015
Sri Lanka's memory wars thwart reconciliation
Six years after the end of the civil war that claimed at least 70,000 lives between 1983 and 2009, Sri Lanka appears to have made little progress on reconciliation between its ethnic Tamils and Sinhalese majority.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 20, 2015
In search of Japanese and American shared values
There is a good deal of blather about the shared values that are ostensibly the foundation of the alliance between Japan and the United States. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Barack Obama invoked this mantra when they met in Washington to finalize new Japan-U.S. defense guidelines that hardly any Japanese support. Perhaps the public has the wrong values?
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 13, 2015
Pipe dreams of a 'grand bargain' in East Asia
As the 50th anniversary of the normalization of ties between Japan and South Korea approaches, it seems there is little to celebrate.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 6, 2015
History is harsh unless you erase it
On his visit to the United States in April, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe addressed Congress and told them: "History is harsh. What was done cannot be undone."
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.

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