Japón (Continuación)

By Charles Krauthammer (THE WASHINGTON POST, 20/10/06):

The first stop on Condoleezza Rice's post-detonation, nuclear reassurance tour was Tokyo. There she dutifully unfurled the American nuclear umbrella, pledging in person that the United States would meet any North Korean attack on Japan with massive American retaliation, nuclear if necessary.

An important message, to be sure, for the short run, lest Kim Jong Il imbibe a little too much cognac and be teased by one of his "pleasure squad" lovelies into launching a missile or two into Japan.

But Rice's declaration had another and obvious longer-run intent: to quell any thought Japan might have of going nuclear to counter and deter North Korea's bomb.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Yoshihisa Komori, the Washington correspondent and editor at large for the Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 30/09/06):

LAST Tuesday, Japan’s Parliament elected Shinzo Abe as its youngest prime minister since World War II. Some critics in Japan have called him a “hawkish nationalist,” but in fact, he — like the nearly 80 percent of Japanese also born after the war — has merely been shaped by democracy.

Mr. Abe in particular was also influenced by the course of Japan’s alliance with America. In 1960, the 6-year-old Shinzo Abe sat on the lap of his grandfather, Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, while thousands marched outside demonstrating against the first full-fledged security treaty between Japan and the United States.…  Seguir leyendo »

By George F. Will (THE WASHINGTON POST, 07/09/06):

TOKYO -- Longevity is a blessing, but the Japanese live inconveniently long lives. Inconvenient, that is, for those who administer Japan's welfare state.

Welfare states are made possible by the productivity of modern economies, which make possible living conditions -- improved nutrition, hygiene, housing, medical care, education, environment -- that increase life expectancy. That increase threatens the solvency of welfare states, because the elderly receive most government transfer payments: pensions and medical care.

The life expectancy of Japanese women (85.5) is the world's highest, and that of men (78.5) is behind only Hong Kong and Switzerland.…  Seguir leyendo »

By George F. Will (THE WASHINGTON POST, 27/08/06):

TOKYO -- Ever since Commodore Perry's black ships entered the harbor here in 1853, the Japanese have wondered whether their nation could modernize without becoming thoroughly westernized. Today they wonder whether their nation can provide for their defense and play a proper role in the international security system without jettisoning a national identity imposed in 1947 by the nation that had sent the black ships.

In America, many domestic issues become constitutional controversies, but presidents have negligible constitutional restraints on their conduct of foreign policy. In Japan, foreign policy often begins -- and almost ends -- by construing Article 9 of the constitution imposed by the American occupation 60 years ago.…  Seguir leyendo »

By George F. Will (THE WASHINGTON POST, 24/08/06):

TOKYO -- Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's tenure, which ends next month, has been more remarkable than perhaps most Japanese comprehend. He is the third-longest-serving prime minister since 1945, and his five years have echoed aspects of the careers of four Western leaders: Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Rudy Giuliani and Andrew Jackson.

Like Thatcher, of whom it was said that she could not see an institution without swatting it with her handbag, Koizumi, 64, cast a cool eye on his country and found it overregulated and enervated by excessive dependence on the state. Like Blair, who came to power disliking his Labor Party even more than he did the Conservative opposition, Koizumi thought that many of Japan's problems reflected the political culture congenial to his Liberal Democratic Party, which has governed Japan for all but 10 months since 1955.…  Seguir leyendo »

By George F. Will (THE WASHINGTON POST, 20/08/06):

TOKYO -- The past is present everywhere, but Japan is an unusually history-haunted nation. Elsewhere the Cold War is spoken of in the past tense. Japan, however, lives in a dangerous neighborhood with two communist regimes -- truculent China and weird North Korea. For Japan, the fall of the Berlin Wall did not close an epoch. Even World War II still shapes political discourse because of a Shinto shrine in the center of this city.

Young soldiers leaving Japan during that war often would say, "If I don't come home, I'll see you at Yasukuni."…  Seguir leyendo »

By G. John Ikenberry (THE WASHINGTON POST, 17/08/06):

Japan has a serious geopolitical problem -- and increasingly it is an American problem as well.

Essentially, the problem is that Japan has not been able to eliminate the suspicions and grievances that still linger in China and Korea about Japan's militarist past. While postwar Germany has somehow been able to put the "history issue" to rest, postwar Japan has not. The result is that Japan -- 61 years after its surrender and the inauguration of its long, peaceful return to the international community -- remains isolated and incapable of providing leadership in a region that is quickly transforming in the shadow of a rising China.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Gary J. Bass, an associate professor of politics and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, is the author of “Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals.’’ (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 05/08/06):

Princeton, N.J.

IF Dec. 7 is the date that Americans remember for the infamy of Pearl Harbor, then Aug. 15 is the wrenching coda remembered by Japanese: the date on which, in 1945, Japan agreed to surrender in World War II. Under Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, however, Aug. 15 has been marked not just by dignified commemoration, but by repeated international brawls over his annual visits to the tainted Yasukuni war shrine.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Richard Lloyd Parry. This is an extract of Tokyo Notebook (THE TIMES, 28/03/06):

OVER DINNER the other week an American friend confided in me an astonishing secret. He is 30 years old, educated in the US and Britain, and has spent the best part of four years living in Japan. He has worked as an English teacher, speaks good Japanese, and lives in Tokyo, where he is establishing a name for himself as an artist. In the meantime, he supports himself in a profession that could only exist in Japan. Every Saturday and Sunday, and sometimes on other days during the peak spring and summer season, he travels to one of the tens of thousands of wedding chapels found in every Japanese town.…  Seguir leyendo »