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August 28, 2025

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EDITORIALS

Jan 4, 2003

A year of living dangerously

By most measures, the war against Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda terror network is going well. Close collaboration among security agencies has resulted in the arrest of high-ranking operatives and the cracking of terrorist cells around the world. Yet fear persists -- and with good reason. In 2003,...

EDITORIALS

Jan 3, 2003

Folly in chasing a 'bubble' mirage

The past year saw Japan's economy continue to wallow in a quagmire of deflation. The problem was compounded by the bad-debt crisis in the banking sector. The recurring afterthought is that the economy is still paying a heavy price for the 1980s bubble. Even more dismaying is the realization that there...

EDITORIALS

Jan 1, 2003

Tumultuous politics await

A big question hangs over Japanese politics in 2003: Will a snap general election be held? The key to the question is held by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who has the prerogative of dissolving the Lower House. Mr. Koizumi, who is also president of the Liberal Democratic Party, faces a party presidential...

EDITORIALS

Dec 31, 2002

Making sense of the mess of 2002

2002 will be remembered as a year of spectacular failures. The political mistakes that became front-page news were glaring, but they were often the product of miscalculation. Those that dominated the business headlines were the result of greed and larceny. Painful as all those blunders were, there are...

EDITORIALS

Dec 30, 2002

Mr. Koizumi fails to measure up

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is losing his precious political capital: public popularity. He may be likened to a stage actor who no longer strikes a strong chord in his audience. The actor still has many fans, but he is falling short of general expectations. Moreover, his lines lack punch and he...

EDITORIALS

Dec 29, 2002

What 'McDonaldization'?

I t wasn't all that long ago that American journalist Thomas Friedman was making headlines with his so-called Golden Arches Theory of conflict prevention: No two countries that both had McDonald's, he wrote in 1996, had ever fought a war against each other. Around the same time, McDonald's was drawing...

EDITORIALS

Dec 28, 2002

Playing with human rights

China is once again engaging in human rights diplomacy. This week the government in Beijing released dissident Xu Wenli, one of the country's most famous human rights activists. It is tempting to applaud this long-overdue development, but the truth is that Mr. Xu should not have been in jail in the first...

EDITORIALS

Dec 27, 2002

Resuscitate local economies

Japan's economy for 2003 poses inevitable questions. Will deflation get worse or better? How far will banks go to shed their dud loans? If the United States goes to war with Iraq, how will it affect the economy? In these increasingly uncertain times, forecasting is a tricky business. Offering stock answers...

EDITORIALS

Dec 26, 2002

Nuclear blackmail won't fly

Once again, North Korea is playing a game of nuclear brinkmanship. In an eerie throwback to 1994, when a nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula pushed the United States and North Korea to the brink of war, Pyongyang has removed seals and disabled monitoring cameras at nuclear facilities that had been...

EDITORIALS

Dec 25, 2002

A bridge from science to life

The government's Biotechnology Strategy Council deEfines biotechnology as a pillar industry of the 21st century along with information technology. This perception, expressed in the council's "outline of bioEtechnology strategy" issued last week, should serve as an important guide for Japan. Such a national...

EDITORIALS

Dec 24, 2002

Afghan revival depends on security

Sunday marked the first anniversary of the establishment of an interim government in Afghanistan following the collapse of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime. Earlier this month, Mr. Hamid Karzai, head of the transitional government that took over from an interim administration in June, noted...

EDITORIALS

Dec 23, 2002

Pay cuts demand job security

It has been a long time since the word "shunto" -- the spring labor offensive -- stood for its traditional meaning. With the domestic economy caught in a deflationary spiral, the idea of winning across-the-board wage concessions from management on top of regular pay increases no longer holds water. So...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

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

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Muji has been sustainable from the beginning

Muji has been sustainable from the beginning

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