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August 24, 2025
 

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COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Sep 15, 2010
Seoul blundering on North
South Korea has committed a number of blunders in its efforts to gather intelligence on North Korea since President Lee Myun Bak took office in February 2008 with a tougher stand against Pyongyang than his predecessors.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 15, 2010
Why Putin is good for Japan
By Tina Burrett
For Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, it has been a hectic summer. He took a spin across 2,100 km of the Siberian tundra in a Lada, was initiated into the Hell's Angels, fired darts at gray whales with a crossbow and still found time to jump into the cockpit of a Be-200 jet to extinguish the wildfires...
COMMENTARY
Sep 14, 2010
Higher education is worse since policy switch in 1991
By Takamitsu Sawa
For the past two decades, the education ministry has worked hard to reform Japan's university system. In fiscal 1991, the ministry adopted the policy of giving priority to postgraduate programs, leading a number of national universities to change gakubu — traditional undergraduate-level entities such...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 12, 2010
Potash holds lessons for China on how to grow its economy
By Kevin Rafferty
HONG KONG — The hostile takeover bid by Australia's BHP Billiton for Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, Canada, is worthy of a case study by Harvard Business Review, but it is also a fascinating example of the adventures and misadventures, opportunities, and considerable failings of global capitalism at...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 12, 2010
Late P.E.N. Club president sets tone of Tokyo global writers' meet
By Roger Pulvers
This month, The Japan P.E.N. Club hosts the annual International PEN Congress, whose wide variety of lectures, readings and symposia will feature guests from Japan and overseas.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 10, 2010
Will nationalistic pursuits doom European Union?
By Charles Kupchan
WASHINGTON, THE WASHINGTON POST — The European Union is dying — not a dramatic or sudden death, but one so slow and steady that we may look across the Atlantic one day soon and realize that the project of European integration that we've taken for granted over the past half-century is no more.
COMMENTARY
Sep 9, 2010
China corners vital market
By Michael Richardson
In the race to build advanced industrial and military products, China has a key advantage: the world's biggest reserves of rare earth minerals that are essential to many of these products.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 9, 2010
The 'perfect storm' brewing in Central Asia
By Kenneth Weisbrode
FLORENCE, Italy — Dean Acheson, U.S. President Harry Truman's secretary of state, liked to quote a friend who said that being in government made him scared, but that being out of it made him worried. To those of us not privy to the hidden complexities of NATO's military intervention in Afghanistan,...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 8, 2010
Crisis hits Third World hardest
By Philippe Douste-Blazy
PARIS — The global economic crisis has claimed many victims — unemployed workers, underwater homeowners and bankrupt pensioners — but nowhere have the repercussions been as devastating as in the developing world. The setback to the fragile gains of recent years, particularly in Africa, threatens...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 8, 2010
Earth over a barrel of oil
By Kevin Rafferty
HONG KONG — Oil prices continue to fluctuate nervously with every report or rumor that the world economy is either on the mend or heading for double dip recession. They slithered again when it became clear that the U.S. economy is still in trouble. Ben Bernanke, the U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, and...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 7, 2010
Rise of China prods India-South Korea ties
By Harsh V. Pant
LONDON — Indian Defense Minister A.K. Anthony was visiting South Korea last week at the invitation of his South Korean counterpart to boost defense cooperation between the two states. His visit comes two months after the Indian external affairs minister visited Seoul.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 6, 2010
Battle for Turkey's constitution
By Haldun Gulalp
ISTANBUL — On Sept. 12, Turks will vote on a set of constitutional amendments proposed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been in power for eight years. Since the vote falls on the 30th anniversary of the 1980 military coup, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is portraying...
Japan to revise romanization rules for first time in 70 years
The Agency for Cultural Affairs is recommending replacing the government’s long-standing Kunrei system with more widely used Hepburn-style spellings.
Women-only communities flourish in China
Chen Yani (right), nicknamed "Keke," eats lunch with friends and guests in a female co-living space she founded called "Keke's Imaginative Space" in Hangzhou, in eastern China's Zhejiang province, on July 14.
JR East cancels luxury train run over crew's boozing
East Japan Railway said Thursday that it will cancel one trip of a luxury overnight sleeper service, which was originally scheduled to depart from Ueno Station in Tokyo on Aug. 30, after crew members were found to have been drinking alcohol on duty.
Man arrested over deadly stabbing of woman in Kobe
Masashi Tanimoto, 35, the suspect in the deadly stabbing a 24-year-old woman, is taken into custody in Kobe on Friday night.
Japanese city proposes two-hour daily limit for smartphone use
The Toyoake Municipal Government in Aichi Prefecture is planning to enact an ordinance to urge all smartphone users in the city to limit screen time to two hours a day outside work or school.
Alicia Keys closed Summer Sonic, but J-pop owned it
Summer Sonic’s 2025 lineup demonstrated its strength, showcasing the latest in J-pop, including “new kawaii” act Fruits Zipper.
Is the LDP’s catch-all approach to politics still effective?
Former economic security minister Sanae Takaichi visits Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on Aug. 15. Political commentator Toru Hashimoto has suggested that Takaichi ought to lead a group of like-minded hawkish politicians out of the Liberal Democratic Party and form their own party.
Fingers sore from too much phone time? You might have ‘sumaho yubi.’
A catch-all term for tendonitis and arthritis caused by excessive smartphone use, 'sumaho yubi' may be difficult to treat for gadget-crazy Japan.
As farm minister, Koizumi is held ‘hostage’ by Ishiba
Farm minister Shinjiro Koizumi (center) attends a Lower House session on Aug. 1. Locking Koizumi into the Cabinet is Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s way of turning a potential rival into a team player, according to one expert.
Big burgers and bigger ambitions for Japan's Burger King
Kazuhiro Nomura, president of BK Japan Holdings, which operates Burger King in Japan

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past
By Alex K.T. Martin

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