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EDITORIALS

Jul 30, 2006

Doha goes down the drain

The Doha Round of global trade talks collapsed amid bitter recriminations last week. Officially, the talks are in "indefinite suspension," but they are as good as dead if governments do not make fundamental changes in their thinking. That means facing down powerful domestic agricultural lobbies and taking...

EDITORIALS

Jul 29, 2006

No time to be shy

The Sept. 20 Liberal Democratic Party presidential campaign heated up Thursday when Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki became the first LDP lawmaker to officially declare his candidacy. Mr. Tanigaki's entry promises to deepen discussion of tax and other policy issues following former Chief Cabinet Secretary...

EDITORIALS

Jul 28, 2006

The endgame in Lebanon

It has been more than two weeks since Hezbollah launched a raid on Israel that prompted a brutal Israel response and appears to have triggered what can only be called a war. The international community has sharply criticized the combatants, but has done little more than protest. There is talk of inserting...

EDITORIALS

Jul 27, 2006

Harm in delayed action

The recent revelation that 21 people have died of carbon-monoxide poisoning caused by malfunctioning gas water heaters points to a lack of awareness and slow action on the part of the parties involved -- the manufacturer and its parent company, Paloma Industries Ltd. and Paloma Co., the Ministry of Economy,...

EDITORIALS

Jul 26, 2006

Words carrying weight

Last week's discovery of a memorandum recording the words of the Emperor Showa explaining why he stopped visiting Yasukuni Shrine will exert considerable influence on the debate over Japanese publicly remembering Japan's war dead, while praying for peace, in a manner acceptable both to Japanese and to...

EDITORIALS

Jul 25, 2006

Safe storage for nuclear waste

Nuclear energy is making a comeback. In Northeast Asia, nuclear power has long been a staple of national energy policy. But the rest of the world has suffered from a nuclear allergy mostly as the result of the fear of environmental disasters, such as the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Today, the twin specters...

EDITORIALS

Jul 24, 2006

Story worsens with each telling

The investigation into the mid-May murder of a 7-year-old boy in the community of Fujisato, Akita Prefecture, has taken a second bizarre twist since 33-year-old Ms. Suzuka Hatakeyama, who lived two houses away from the boy's home, was arrested June 4 on suspicion of dumping the boy's body by a river,...

EDITORIALS

Jul 23, 2006

Mr. Zidane and other 'demons'

Zinedine Zidane must be thanking the gods for FIFA, which in a welcome move Thursday did much to restore some of the lost glow to his image -- and some sanity to a debate in which sanctimonious nonsense had been gaining the upper hand.

EDITORIALS

Jul 22, 2006

Funding scandal shakes ivory tower

It came as a shock last year when former Seoul National University professor Hwang Woo Suk's claims that he had created stem cells by cloning human embryos turned out to be fraudulent. A recent case at Waseda University in Tokyo is no less surprising, although it mainly concerns the irregular use of...

EDITORIALS

Jul 21, 2006

Summit of Mr. Putin's success

The annual summit meeting of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations is often dismissed as a photo opportunity for world leaders rather than a place where real policies are agreed upon. This year's meeting, held earlier this week in St. Petersburg, Russia, was no exception. The summit declaration...

EDITORIALS

Jul 20, 2006

Warning North Korea

The United Nations Security Council resolution condemning North Korea's July 5 multiple missile test-firings may lack strong teeth, but it serves as a stern warning from the international community to the reclusive country. While the contents of the resolution fell short of what Japan originally wanted...

EDITORIALS

Jul 19, 2006

Hope of the marketplace

The Bank of Japan's lifting of its zero-interest rate policy last week represents an end to an extraordinary policy that continued for five years and four months. With its decision, which marks a step toward normalization of the nation's monetary policy, the central bank has signaled that the Japanese...

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.

What comes after 100?

By Tomoko Otake

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Tsukuba massif granite, one of the world’s few heritage stones

Tsukuba massif granite, one of the world’s few heritage stones

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