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August 07, 2025
 

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COMMENTARY / World
May 28, 2012
Why do economies stop growing?
By Michael Spence
Over the years, advanced and developing countries have experimented, sometimes deliberately and frequently inadvertently, with a variety of approaches to growth. Unfortunately, many of these strategies have turned out to have built-in limitations or decelerators — what one might call elements of unsustainability....
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
May 28, 2012
Unmachinable, unreformable, but necessary
By Hiroaki Sato
One recent topic for The Wall Street Journal's front-page space set aside for stories other than the daily shenanigans of business, politics and wars was the community in Florida created for retired letter carriers. ("In Florida, These Retirees Deliver a First-Class Protest," March 27.)
COMMENTARY
May 28, 2012
The politics of victimhood
By Ramesh Thakur
When a group of gay activists engaged in an angry confrontation with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, who was having dinner with a major columnist in a Melbourne restaurant, the journalist noted how those demanding tolerance of diversity had shown an ugly face of extreme intolerance uncharacteristic of...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 27, 2012
Nuclear power profiteers seem keen to risk getting blood on their hands
By Roger Pulvers
Areport this year by the Independent Investigation Committee on the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, a group set up in September 2011 by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation, condemned what it called Japan's "absolute safety myth." The Japanese government, in collusion with the media and the regional electric-power...
COMMENTARY / World
May 24, 2012
Sierra Leone: finding forgiveness in unlikely places
By Samuel Konkofa Koroma
Last month a court in The Hague found former Liberian president Charles Taylor guilty of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in fueling a 10-year, bloody conflict in Sierra Leone. The verdict capped a trial that itself had dragged on for years and had been punctuated by moments...
COMMENTARY / World
May 24, 2012
Beijing's North Korea policy only emboldens Pyongyang
By Brad Glosserman
Discussions in Beijing about North Korea are always frustrating. It's not so much due to the sharp divergence in U.S. and Chinese thinking about how to deal with Pyongyang; the two sides differ on many issues. No, the real problem, from our perspective, is the illogic of the Chinese position. Indeed,...
COMMENTARY / World
May 24, 2012
Turkey tacks new foreign policy course
By Abdullah Gul
Turkey has recently been at the forefront of international economic and political debates. On the one hand, despite the economic crisis engulfing neighboring Europe, Turkey remains the world's second-fastest growing economy, after China. On the other hand, there is almost no issue on the global agenda...
COMMENTARY
May 23, 2012
The worldwide triumph of English
By Gwynne Dyer
The second president of the United States, John Adams, predicted in 1780 that "English will be the most respectable language in the world and the most universally read and spoken in the next century, if not before the end of this one." It is destined "in the next and succeeding centuries to be more generally...
COMMENTARY / World
May 23, 2012
Chen case highlights Beijing's misrule of law
By Amy Gadsden and Michael A. Fitts
A last-minute deal between the United States and China may afford human-rights lawyer and activist Chen Guangcheng the opportunity to enroll in law school in New York. But, even if a way out of the diplomatic debacle is at hand, much about the case remains troubling. In particular, despite more than...
COMMENTARY
May 22, 2012
Lorca would have cheered Obama's decision
By Cesar Chelala
You will never know how much I love you
COMMENTARY / World
May 21, 2012
Rebalancing eurozone wages and productivity
By Kemal Dervis
The eurozone crisis unfolded primarily as a sovereign-debt crisis mostly on its southern periphery, with interest rates on sovereign bonds at times reaching 6 to 7 percent for Italy and Spain, and even higher for other countries. And because eurozone banks hold a substantial part of their assets in the...
COMMENTARY / World
May 21, 2012
Reinventing NATO for the 'smart defense' era
By Karl-heinz Kamp
This month the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will hold its next summit in Chicago. Unlike European Union summits, which take place almost monthly, NATO's are infrequent. This helps to explain the inflated rhetoric that surrounds them: The November 2010 summit in Lisbon, for example, was described...
China’s unbeatable new production model export
China is not merely moving more goods; it is exporting a new, ruthlessly efficient production model powered by automation, AI and state-guided industrial optimization.
Extreme heat in Japan set to peak this week
People shield their eyes from the sun as they walk through a street on a hot day in Tokyo on July 26.
How Pakistan shot down India's cutting-edge fighter using Chinese gear
An Indian Air Force pilot gets out of a Rafale fighter jet during its induction ceremony at an air force station in Ambala, India, September 2020.
Australia announces new warships will come from Japan
The Maritime Self-Defense Force's Mogami-class frigate Niyodo sails at an undisclosed location in this image released Tuesday.
Italy's fast fashion hub becomes Chinese mafia battlefield
Signs for fast-fashion factories in Prato, Italy, on Friday. Chinese crime groups in the district thrive on the "Prato system" rife with corruption in the fast-fashion sector.
Australia announces new warships will come from Japan
The Maritime Self-Defense Force's Mogami-class frigate Niyodo sails at an undisclosed location in this image released Tuesday.
Fuji Rock's weekend of surprises was one of its best yet
Radwimps lead singer Yojiro Noda threw himself into the rock band’s Green Stage performance ahead of headliner Vampire Weekend.
How Trump is gaslighting on climate change — with Japan’s help
The Bishu Maru LNG tanker, owned by Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha, next to the Freeport LNG terminal in Texas
With a new distillery, Suntory makes a spirited move on gin market
A staff inspects a distillation pot still at Suntory's new Osaka Spirits & Liqueurs Craft Distillery, which will focus on gin production and help Suntory capture a bigger slice of the fast-growing gin market.
Junglia brought dinos back to Okinawa. But will it bring tourists?
At Panorama Dining, one of Junglia’s two proper restaurants that also doubles as the rooftop Inifinity Terrace overlook, guests can pay extra to sit in balcony tables made to look like birds’ nests overlooking the park grounds.

Podcast

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

Longform

A mushroom cloud from the atomic bombing on Hiroshima taken from a U.S. military aircraft on Aug. 6, 1945. Copying the photo without permission is prohibited.
80 years on, a Japanese American hibakusha recalls the day the bomb dropped
By Elizabeth Beattie

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