Jan 29, 2021
U.S. President Joe Biden has promised that re-engaging with the world and prioritizing alliances will top his administration’s diplomatic agenda. During his campaign, Biden fiercely criticized the Trump administration’s disregard for alliances, claiming that it had seriously undermined the status and influence of the United States on the world stage.
To be sure, Trump weakened American alliances by referring to European countries as trade “enemies,” hinting at a withdrawal from NATO and advancing the withdrawal of American troops from Germany. In the Asia Pacific region, Trump demonstrated his disdain for alliances by suddenly postponing U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises, saying they could hinder a “deal” at the U.S. summit with North Korea.
The February edition of the monthly magazine
Bungei Shunju carries a roundtable discussion among opinion leaders entitled, “The Coldest Winter in Japan-South Korea Relations.”
One of the participants is Liberal Democratic Party Diet member Minoru Kiuchi, who formerly was a diplomat responsible for South Korea within the Foreign Ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau.
Kiuchi likens the current state of bilateral relations to a soccer match in which the administration of South Korean President Moon Jae In “has bought off the referees and repeatedly fouls.”
On January 8, the court handed down a ruling awarding ₩100 million KRW (around ￥9.5 million JPY or $91,400 USD) to each of 12 plaintiffs. They are former “comfort women” (
Kazutoshi Hando is seen in his home archive room in Tokyo s Setagaya Ward in 2014. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
In the decisive battles of the Soviet-Japanese border conflict in 1939, known in Japan as the Nomonhan Incident, the hitherto invincible Japanese Army was thoroughly defeated by the Soviet forces.
The tragedy was condensed into a narrative titled Nomonhan no Natsu (Summer in Nomonhan), by Kazutoshi Hando. When I read it for the first time, I felt my heart skipping a beat.
Japanese shells and other assault weapons had no effect whatsoever on state-of-the-art Soviet tanks. The two nations were not even close in military strength.
Dec 12, 2020
Some people’s lives are like horror movies. It’s strange that, in an age that can create virtual reality, self-driving cars and intelligent machines, the world’s third-largest economy can’t solve the problem of human misery. Maybe it’s insoluble.
More and more Japanese women seem to feel it is. Female suicide is sharply rising. July was a watershed. National Police Agency statistics tell the tale, as far as numbers can tell it 651 women are known to have taken their own lives that month, up from 400-500 a month typically. The increase continued into August and September. Male suicide figures are higher but not rising. What is evoking this new despair in women?