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May 03, 2024
 

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THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jan 27, 2003
Corporations cast a shadow on education
NEW YORK -- Did you know that Stanford University has a Yahoo! Chair of Information Management Systems?
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Dec 30, 2002
Pomp, ceremony and the U.S. presidency
NEW YORK -- A new book by Christopher Anderson is called "George and Laura: Portrait of an American Marriage." Andersen, who also wrote "Jack and Jackie" and "Bill and Hillary," may not always be "respectful," to quote a reviewer, toward America's First Couples, but the appearance of his latest book -- midway through the current presidency -- and the prominence The New York Times book review has given it remind me of a phenomenon that puzzled me for several years after I settled in this city: the royal treatment that American people seem eager to accord their president.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Nov 25, 2002
Gilded Age of excess returns to America
NEW YORK -- During a recent talk in this city on his lifelong subject, the Iwakura Embassy, businessman-scholar Saburo Izumi reminded those gathered that the Japanese group visited the United States during the Gilded Age. This appellation comes, of course, from American writer Mark Twain (and C.D. Warner) and refers to the period in 19th-century America when, as a literary encyclopedia puts it, "unbridled acquisitiveness dominated the national life."
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Oct 28, 2002
Words of wisdom on U.S. interventionism
NEW YORK -- Searching the Internet for information on immigration in the United States, I came across President Grover Cleveland's message to Congress on Dec. 18, 1893. In it he detailed his opposition to the annexation of Hawaii. At the start of that year, a self-styled Committee of Safety, led by foreign residents representing the interests of sugar planters, had overthrown Queen Lilioukalani's government of Hawaii and hastily submitted a treaty of annexation to the U.S. Senate. European-style imperialist sentiments were sweeping the land. In "Grover Cleveland," historian Henry Graff tells us that a popular jingle went, ". . . . Lilioukalani / Give us your little brown hanni."
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Oct 13, 2002
Beijing stymies Pyongyang experiment
HONG KONG -- Pyongyang-Beijing ties used to be characterized as being "as close as lips and teeth," but that phrase no longer applies to the relationship. For no sooner does North Korea arouse deep Japanese public outrage with its prevarication over past abductions than the isolated Stalinist state provokes a deep sense of Chinese official indignation, as it seeks to open up to the outside world without consulting Beijing.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Sep 30, 2002
Great Tokyo Air Raid was a war crime
On Dec. 7, 1964, the Japanese government conferred the First Order of Merit with the Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun upon Gen. Curtis LeMay -- yes, the same general who, less than 20 years earlier, had incinerated "well over half a million Japanese civilians, perhaps nearly a million."
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Sep 8, 2002
Judicial biases shape the American way
NEW YORK -- The first time I knew that Japan's Supreme Court was not really supreme but just another political arm of the state was when it ruled on the Sunagawa Incident. In December 1959, it reversed the Tokyo District Court's ruling that the Japan-U.S. Mutual Security Treaty was unconstitutional.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jul 29, 2002
Pursuit of mediocrity in textbook selection
NEW YORK -- Is the presence of 50,000 prostitutes "an important historical fact"? Grace Shore, chairwoman of the Texas State Board of Education, didn't think so, nor did the majority on her 15-member board.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jun 24, 2002
U.S. lessons Japan may prefer to skip
NEW YORK -- Americans love to learn and teach lessons. The Japanese love to seek and accept them.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
May 27, 2002
Doing one's duty in a desperate situation
NEW YORK -- In April, when a young Palestinian woman blew herself up, killing and wounding many Israelis, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "The president condemns this morning's homicide bombing."
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
May 2, 2002
The life and times of a Manchurian girl
NEW YORK -- The New York Times' recent reprinting of a cartoon showing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat gagged and bound to a chair while Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon presses him to "say something! do something!" made me think of Rikoran, known today mainly as Yoshiko Yamaguchi.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Mar 25, 2002
Lighthearted songs for the heaviest of times
NEW YORK -- My colleague Jeff passed on to me a writer's query posted on the Internet. As it happened, the inquiring writer was a novelist of whom I am a fan, and the subject on which he sought help was intriguing. He wanted to know about Japanese popular songs -- especially popular military songs -- in December 1941.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Feb 25, 2002
Memoir sheds light on Chinese atrocity
NEW YORK -- My businessman friend Michio Hamaji, whose avowed mission is to improve international understanding, recently brought me a Japanese book titled "Charz." He told me it's a childhood memoir describing a Chinese atrocity in the late 1940s. If translated into English and published in the United States, he thought, it might counter whatever ill effects Iris Chang's book, "The Rape of Nanking" (1998), might have created in America. Without reading the memoir, I had to tell him that was unlikely.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jan 28, 2002
The plastic nature of historic judgment
NEW YORK -- There is something mesmerizing about America's fascination with its own people of prominence, especially presidents. There is an endless stream of biographies, and some become immensely popular.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Dec 31, 2001
War recalls the savaging of Okinawa
NEW YORK -- Evidently prompted by the war in Afghanistan, John Gregory Dunne has discussed three books in The New York Review of Books (Dec. 20) to remind us of the savaging process that is war. For Dunne, whose sensitivity to anything false matches that of his wife, Joan Didion, who called "The Greatest Generation" -- the most fashionable historical branding in America today -- a "treacly concoction" and who described the "Boys of Pointe du Hoc" speech that Peggy Noonan wrote for Ronald Reagan for the 40th anniversary of Omaha Beach as "sentimental claptrap."
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Nov 26, 2001
Looking back on life in Stalinist Russia
NEW YORK -- My friend Lenore Parker threw a party for Mary M. Leder, who has just published her first book, at age 86. The book is an autobiography, "My Life in Stalinist Russia: An American Woman Looks Back" (Indiana University Press).
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Aug 27, 2001
U.S. wants justice for all -- except itself
NEW YORK -- On Aug. 2, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia convicted Bosnian Serb Gen. Radislav Krstic of genocide. But even before the verdict, the Bush administration had made clear its opposition to the effort to create an International Criminal Court, which would broaden the scope of jurisdiction from specific to universal. As the July 13 New York Times dispatch from the United Nations put it, the Bush administration may even "work actively to reverse international support" for the court.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jul 30, 2001
Is yellow journalism in vogue again?
Why do so many foreign commentators feel they can get away with anything they say about Japan?
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jun 25, 2001
Debunking America's 'Good War' myth
The movie "Pearl Harbor" may be copying what happened after Japan's actual assault: a spectacular initial success followed by a string of disappointments. But since I'm invoking history, I must hasten to add that there won't be anything remotely resembling an unconditional surrender in store for the Hollywood venture.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
May 28, 2001
Progress made in how Japan sees Korea
The latest instance of textbook controversy has reminded me of the changing descriptions in the entry on Korea in different editions of a well-known Japanese-language dictionary. Reports have it that the South Korean government was so upset by a certain textbook that its protests brought on a diplomatic crisis.
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.
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.
'So hot you can't breathe': Extreme heat hits the Philippines
A pedestrian cools himself with a folding hand fan as he waits for a ride along a road in Manila on Wednesday, as extreme heat hit the Philippines.
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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