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May 03, 2024
 

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THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jan 28, 2008
Watching the world's biggest roadshow
NEW YORK — I was recently amused to read the following observation quoted in an intellectual history of modern Japan: "The system in which people vie to get elected head of state through indulgence in garrulity and by flaunting gestures like those of low-class actors is a singularly bizarre custom that we should do nothing more than watch from the sidelines." The system in question, of course, is the process of electing a president in the United States.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jan 8, 2008
Bottle of water delivers wrong message
NEW YORK — "You really have to wonder at the utter stupidity and the irresponsibility sometimes of American consumers," Salt Lake City Mayor Ross "Rocky" Anderson said. "These false needs are provided, and too often we just fall in line with what Madison Avenue comes up with to market these unnecessary products."
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Nov 26, 2007
Plenty wrong with U.S. agricultural policy
NEW YORK — The U.S. farm bill — a blanket term for all measures related to agriculture, some barely so — appears doomed this year. The House version passed at the end of July, but the Senate version has been stalled in such a way that there's even talk that its enactment may not occur until after the next administration takes over in 2009. The bill is rewritten every five years or so.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Oct 29, 2007
Fatal deliverance from an 'iron storm'
NEW YORK — I was thinking once again about the intractability of Japan's part in the Pacific phase of World War II when the news came: Okinawans had staged a huge rally to protest the Japanese government's downplaying in textbooks the military's role in "group suicides" among civilians during the Battle of Okinawa.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Sep 24, 2007
The Self-Defense Forces: living with a lie
NEW YORK — Many commentators have invoked historical analogies for U.S. President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and its still unfolding aftermath, with some saying, correctly, that no exact historical analogies are possible for anything, the least of all this damnable war.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Aug 20, 2007
Why can't Americans give up their guns?
NEW YORK — Is there anything comparable to the numbing obstinacy, the utter blindness to reality, that politicians display toward the consequences of untrammeled gun ownership in this country? So I wondered, once again, when I stumbled upon President George W. Bush's answer to what some now call "the Virginia Tech Massacre" — the report that three of his agencies prepared on his orders.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jul 30, 2007
How a woman portrayed Hitler as human
NEW YORK — What kind of courage, or audacity even, is required to stage, in Washington, a play featuring Adolf Hitler — one provocatively titled "My Friend Hitler" and written no less than by Yukio Mishima? After all, not just Hitler, but anything associated with Hitler is condemned here. And Mishima has a certain kind of reputation.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jun 25, 2007
Haiku appreciation at the United Nations
NEW YORK — This month I was judge of the Japanese division of the haiku contest sponsored by the United Nations International School (UNIS). John Stevenson, editor of Frogpond, the magazine of the Haiku Society of America, judged the haiku written in English.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
May 28, 2007
Rooting out the purplish, yellow perils
NEW YORK — A certain plant of the pea family has been appreciated in Japan — poetically, dietarily and medicinally — since ancient times. So, in the oldest extant anthology of Japanese poetry, the "Man'yoshu," it is used as an epithet for "without interruption," "for a long time" and so forth, because its most impressive attribute is "vitality," as a photo-packed Japanese Web site for "seasonal flowers" (kisetsu no hana) puts it. Its vines grow not just fast but also unendingly.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Apr 30, 2007
Tobacco's road from fashion to filth
NEW YORK -- If a recent article in the Science section of The New York Times is any indication, the idea that the history of the tobacco industry in the United States has been nothing less than perfidy has taken hold among the socially conscientious. Titled "Tracing the Cigarette's Path From Sexy to Deadly," the article, by Howard Markel, M.D., recounts how cigarette makers kept insisting that smoking is no "health risk" for fully 30 years after the surgeon general, the top U.S. health officer, declared it was, in 1964.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Mar 26, 2007
Jury system doesn't guarantee justice
NEW YORK -- My U.S.-Japanese business consultant friend John Gillespie dropped by and, upon hearing that my wife Nancy had been summoned to jury duty, said Japan should introduce a similar system.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Feb 26, 2007
Eastwood didn't idealize Kuribayashi
NEW YORK -- Isn't the Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi in Clint Eastwood's film "Letters From Iwo Jima" idealized? That was a question my poet friend Geoffrey O'Brien asked on New Year's Eve. A dedicated student of film, O'Brien had remembered a poem about the general that I translated three decades ago. Written in the fury of war, the poem might present Kuribayashi as a die-hard samurai warrior.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jan 29, 2007
Same hot buttons a hundred years later
NEW YORK -- What was the world like 100 years ago? That was not the question I had in mind when I idly wondered if I could find exactly how French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) had described British playwright/novelist Oscar Wilde on one special occasion. As this is the age of the Internet, I quickly found the object of my wonderment in The New Age -- no, not some magazine associated with the amorphous spiritual movement of recent vintage, but the famous Socialist weekly started in England a century ago in 1907.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Dec 25, 2006
Relativity of greatness in a lawless world
NEW YORK -- Americans love to rank their own greats. One recent example is "the 100 most influential Americans of all time" that The Atlantic monthly compiled from the views of 10 historians. The list appears in its December issue, with a brief summary of what distinguishes each person.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Nov 27, 2006
U.S. democracy isn't a suitable export
NEW YORK -- The cover of The New Yorker the week after the Nov. 7 midterm elections showed a giant elephant statue being toppled, with people in the lawn way below jubilant and the White House beyond with the U.S. flag atop it at half mast.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Oct 30, 2006
Erosions of a shaky moral high ground
NEW YORK -- To choose the most bewildering action of George W. Bush since he became U.S. president in 2001 is tough. Is it starting a war without cause? Is it creating a dubious court and prosecuting a man for mass killings while committing even greater mass killings? Or is it concocting legislation that banishes habeas corpus, legalizes torture by Americans, and decriminalizes it retroactively?
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Sep 25, 2006
Supreme Court ruling doesn't hold water
NEW YORK -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia can't be serious. In a recent decision he penned, he quoted "a famous exchange" in the 1942 movie "Casablanca" and a tale about "an Eastern guru" exclaiming, "Ah, after that it is turtles all the way down." The first quote was intended to deride the whole business of wetland protection; the second made fun of fellow Justice Anthony Kennedy for his "misreading of our prior decisions."
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Aug 21, 2006
Precious wetlands rapidly disappearing
SUNSET BEACH, North Carolina -- Back to the barrier island where my wife and I spend two weeks of every summer, I think of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in June that dealt with the disposition of wetlands. The justices' opinions -- in what was called the most significant environmental case under new Chief Justice John Roberts -- were so splintered that one commentator described the decision as a 4-1-4, rather than a 5-4, split.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jul 31, 2006
America: a democracy and an empire
NEW YORK -- One thing that has receded from public debate as a consequence of the disaster that is America's war against Iraq is talk of the United States as an empire. During the onrush to the invasion and for some time afterward, one popular comparison was with the Roman Empire. Another, of course, was with the British Empire, though with the latter it was cautionary.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
May 29, 2006
Creeping back toward thought control
NEW YORK -- Why are politicians so often regressive? Several years ago the Japanese government legally ritualized the singing of the national anthem and the raising of the flag. Now it is intent on changing a 60-year-old education law to codify patriotism.
Weak yen fattens tourist wallets in Japan
People visit the Ameya Yokocho market in Tokyo's Ueno district during the Golden Week holiday on Tuesday.
Biden calls ally Japan ‘xenophobic’ along with rivals China and Russia
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks in Syracuse, New York, on April 25.
Number of vacant homes in Japan hits record high of 9 million
A vacant house in Tokyo is seen demolished in January 2020.
Harajuku strives to reclaim its former glory — and surpass it
Laforet Harajuku, which celebrated its 45th anniversary last year, has been a witness to the district's evolution over the years.
Saudi Arabia steps up Gaza-related arrests as Israel ties edge closer
The arrests for Gaza-related posts indicate Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s regime will take a hard line against citizens not toeing the line when it comes to normalizing ties with Israel.
Kishida sets sights on energy and climate in South America trip
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will use a policy speech in Sao Paulo to set out his vision for ties between Japan and South America, almost 10 years after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated for stronger ties between the two in the same city.
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.
Climate change, chalky grains and the risks for Japan’s rice farmers
A farmer plants seedlings in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture. Japan’s self sufficiency rate for rice is nearly 100%, compared with 38% for food overall, on a calorie basis.
Japan wants you to spend more with ‘luxury tourism’
Performers play a traditional drum unique to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa on March 16 to mark the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line to Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture.
Theaster Gates’ ambitious ‘Afro-Mingei’ brings Black Chicago to Tokyo
Theaster Gates' “A Heavenly Chord” lines up church pews before seven speakers and a Hammond B3 organ, a type of electric organ prevalent in Black American churches.

Podcast

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[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Longform

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By Alex K.T. Martin

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