TOKYO: On March 11, a year will have passed since Japan was struck by the triple tragedy of an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident. According to figures announced by the country's National Police Agency, the Great East Japan Earthquake left (...)
TOKYO: China's behavior during the recent presidential election in Taiwan demonstrates that its leaders have learned some lessons, if only the hard way. They have learned that China can have a greater impact on Taiwanese voters through trade and (...)
TOKYO: As Libya's National Transitional Council attempts to establish a functioning government for a newly liberated country, the truth about what went on under Col. Muammar El-Qaddafi's regime is starting to come to light. Various treasures have (...)
BENGHAZI: The endgame in the Libyan conflict has at last arrived. Much of Libya's capital is now in insurgent hands, with the rebel army itself entering from all directions.
The military impotence of forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Qaddafi — (...)
TOKYO: July will mark two milestones in America's sometimes-tortured relations with Asia. One is the beginning of the end of the nearly decade-long struggle in Afghanistan — the longest war in United States history — as President Barack Obama (...)
TOKYO: Just before the fourth trilateral summit between Japan, China, and South Korea began on May 21, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, and Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan jointly visited the areas affected by the (...)
TOKYO: In Japan, memorial services for the dead are normally held 49 days after their passing. The bereaved mourn throughout this period. The number of victims of the earthquake and tsunami that assaulted the Tohoku region of northeast Japan has now (...)
TOKYO: The tsunami raced through the town at eight meters per second, the speed of a gold-medal sprinter. The wave's height reached 15 meters, towering above even the highest pole-vault bars. Ships were heaved onto hills, and cars floated like (...)
TOKYO: Asian manufacturers have always migrated in search of cheaper labor. Until recently, China seemed their ultimate destination, claiming an ever larger share of investment by Asia's huge production networks. But three developments in China — (...)
TOKYO: President Hu Jintao's visit to Washington is coming at an increasingly tense moment in Sino/American relations. Indeed, mesmerized by China's vast military buildup, a new constellation of strategic partnerships among its neighbors, and (...)
TOKYO: If the most dangerous moment for any dictatorship is when it starts to reform, North Korea looks ready to turn that truism on its head. Its recent shelling of South Korea suggests that the failing Kim dynasty might set East Asia alight rather (...)
TOKYO: For 30 years after World War II's end, Vietnam claimed the global spotlight. Its victories over France and the United States were the defining wars of independence of the post-colonial era. But ever since those immortal scenes of US army (...)
TOKYO: President Dmitri A. Medvedev visit to the south Kuril Islands, which the Soviet Red Army seized from Japan in the closing days of World War II, has demonstrated in unmistakable terms that Russia has no intention of returning the mineral-rich (...)
TOKYO: Kokka no Hinkaku, The Dignity of a State, is the title of a recent book by the Japanese mathematician Masahiko Fujiwara that has sold three million copies. Talk about the book in Japan is so fervid that the term “dignity” (hinkaku) has become (...)
TOKYO: North Korea's communist regime is, by most accounts, set to complete its second dynastic transfer of power, this time from Kim Jong-il, who has ruled since 1994, to his youngest son, Kim Jong-eun. The general assembly of North Korea's (...)
TOKYO: Hillary Clinton's recent trip to Asia may one day be seen as the most significant visit to the region by a United States diplomat since Henry Kissinger's secret mission to Beijing in July 1971. Kissinger's mission triggered a diplomatic (...)
TOKYO: It's déjà vu all over again in Japan. Despite a landslide electoral victory for his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) last September, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama resigned only 262 days after taking office. Sadly, abrupt changes of (...)
TOKYO: On May 1, the Shanghai Expo began, illuminated by a huge fireworks display. The festivities will continue until the end of October. In 1970, Japan celebrated its own tremendous postwar economic growth with the Osaka Expo, as well as by (...)
TOKYO: US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev just signed a major new nuclear arms control treaty in Prague. The world's great nuclear powers will meet this month in Washington and next month at the United Nations to discuss (...)
TOKYO: When asked if he had ever read the classic economics textbook by Paul Samuelson, something almost all first-year students in the subject read, Japanese Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Naoto Kan replied: "I read about 10 pages. (...)
TOKYO: The name "Suzuki is the most popular surname in Japan and the brand name of the most popular car in India. Suzuki has a market share of 55.6% in the compact and mid-size car market in India, whose middle class, car purchasing public, accounts (...)
TOKYO: 2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Japan-United States Security Treaty. But, instead of celebrating an agreement that has helped stabilize East Asia for a half-century, the treaty is now at serious risk, as much from (...)