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August 23, 2025
 

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EDITORIALS
Mar 26, 2008
Japan's new ocean policy
The Cabinet has adopted a basic ocean policy program based on the Basic Law of the Sea, which went into effect in July 2007. Lawmakers from the Liberal Democratic Party, Komeito and the Democratic Party of Japan jointly wrote the law, which was enacted in April 2007, to properly develop marine resources...
EDITORIALS
Mar 26, 2008
Fertile ground for policy formation
More than 100 Diet members from the Liberal Democratic Party, Komeito, the Democratic Party of Japan and Kokumin Shinto have formed a supra-partisan lawmakers' association in response to a call by Sentaku (Choice), a policy study group mainly pushing for devolution and elections based on concrete and...
EDITORIALS
Mar 25, 2008
Respect for public documents
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has had Population and Gender Equality Issues Minister Yoko Kamikawa double as state minister in charge of improving the custodianship of official documents. In a related move, a nine-member government panel has started discussing rules on proper maintenance of such documents....
EDITORIALS
Mar 25, 2008
Heart of darkness
The Akita District Court last Wednesday sentenced a 35-year-old woman to life imprisonment for murdering her 9-year-old daughter and a 7-year-old neighborhood boy in Fujisato, a town with a population of just over 4,000, in Akita Prefecture. The crimes appear to point to problems that may have arisen...
EDITORIALS
Mar 24, 2008
Japan's salary gap
White Day was celebrated March 14, but along with giving cookies and chocolates, men might have done better to give women the one-third of their salaries they are missing. According to new data, Japanese women are paid 33 percent less than men. A recent report on average salary gaps from the International...
EDITORIALS
Mar 24, 2008
Security for cultural treasures
The burning of South Korea's Namdaemun Gate in February was a terrible tragedy. A month after the fire was set by an arsonist, Koreans still mourn their national treasure, now a cinder. Along with many people around the world, we extend our deepest sympathy for the terrible loss of an ancient symbol...
EDITORIALS
Mar 23, 2008
Five years on in Iraq
Five years ago the United States led an international coalition of forces into Iraq to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein. If the goal of that effort was merely the replacement of the government in Baghdad, Operation Iraqi Freedom succeeded.
EDITORIALS
Mar 22, 2008
Lackluster response to a crisis
The size of America's economic woes has finally made an impression on U.S. policymakers. In the past week they have moved to restore stability and liquidity to financial markets, cutting interest rates and engineering financial mergers.
EDITORIALS
Mar 21, 2008
Bank of Japan without a governor
The Upper House led by the Democratic Party of Japan has rejected the nomination of Mr. Koji Tanami, governor of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, as the next chief of the Bank of Japan. Appointments at the BOJ leadership require approval of both houses of the Diet. The rejection Wednesday...
EDITORIALS
Mar 21, 2008
Top court buries a skeleton
The Supreme Court on March 14 dismissed, on the strength of a legal technicality, a request to retry five deceased journalists convicted of promoting communism during the Pacific War years. The five had been convicted in the "Yokohama Incident," regarded as the worst case of free-speech suppression during...
EDITORIALS
Mar 20, 2008
Getting serious about child care
The government is pushing improvement of child-care services and in doing so it aims to stem the decline in birthrate. It anticipates that the number of children aged 5 or younger who would use such services will increase by about 1 million to about 3 million in 10 years.
EDITORIALS
Mar 20, 2008
Usual foot-dragging over disclosure
Top U.S. nuclear negotiator Mr. Christopher Hill and his North Korean counterpart, Mr. Kim Kye Gwan, held talks in Geneva last week to resolve a snag in the North's denuclearization process under the framework of the six-party talks involving the United States, North Korea, China, Japan, Russia and South...
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.
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.
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.
Demystifying the manufacturing success of China
China’s massive scale, strong education system and competitive local governance have enabled it to reach the technological frontier and dominate high-tech manufacturing despite its low per capita gross domestic product.
Infectious diseases to watch for in Japan this summer amid surge of cases
An illustration of a colony of the Bordetella pertussis bacterium that causes pertussis, or whooping cough. As of Aug. 10, there were 64,467 cases reported this year, according to the latest data from the Japan Institute for Health Security.
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
Tokyo crowned No.1 'workation' spot
Workations were a burgeoning trend in the corporate world for years before the COVID-19 pandemic turbocharged it.

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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