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August 24, 2025

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EDITORIALS

Sep 30, 1999

The violence in East Timor

Intimidation failed in East Timor. Despite threats and violence, a stunning 98.6 percent of registered voters turned in ballots in Monday's referendum on the territory's future. Sadly, the peace on voting day was only a lull; violence resumed when the polls closed. Worse, it has become clear that the...

EDITORIALS

Sep 30, 1999

Russia's Chechen scapegoat

A wave of terrorist bombings in Moscow is pushing Russia once again toward war. No government can permit its citizens to be terrorized, and the scale of the recent attacks suggests that a formidable enemy is at work. Still, Moscow's response to the bombings seems ill-planned and desperate. Just as troubling...

EDITORIALS

Sep 29, 1999

Japan's binding promise to the G7

At the G7 conference of finance ministers and central bank chiefs that was held in Washington over the weekend, the delegates from other member nations agreed to adopt a read-between-the-lines statement in which the world's top financial managers shared their worry over the recent sharp rise of the yen....

EDITORIALS

Sep 28, 1999

Indonesia's armed forces strike back

Indonesia's powerful military is not giving up. After humiliating the country with its mishandling of East Timor, the armed forces have rammed legislation through the Parliament that gives the government new powers in the event of an emergency. Opponents fear that the groundwork is being laid for a coup,...

EDITORIALS

Sep 25, 1999

Cold War leftovers

"There's no such thing as retirement, really," John le Carre's secret pilgrim muses in the 1991 spy novel of that name. A few old spies in Britain and the United States have been sharply reminded of the truth of that aphorism this month following sensational revelations that the Cold War espionage web...

EDITORIALS

Sep 24, 1999

A woman's place

Mrs. Raisa Gorbachev, wife of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, died this week, succumbing to leukemia at the age of 67. The world has extended its condolences to her grieving husband, a man who transformed the world as he transformed his country. Few doubt that Mr. Gorbachev could have achieved...

EDITORIALS

Sep 24, 1999

Hope amid the rubble

Taiwan is digging out of the worst earthquake to hit the island since 1935. The magnitude 7.6 temblor has claimed more than 2,100 lives, and the death toll is sure to climb as rescuers search for the other 3,000 people thought to be trapped in the rubble. More than 5,000 others are injured; 100,000 have...

EDITORIALS

Sep 23, 1999

No mandate for Mr. Obuchi

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi has been re-elected president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party by warding off the challenge from former LDP Secretary General Koichi Kato and former LDP policy chief Taku Yamasaki. Many LDP Diet members have been quick to see his impressive victory as a vote of confidence...

EDITORIALS

Sep 21, 1999

When the whole world is watching

What can we do when faced with atrocities being committed on a monstrous scale? It is an old question, but it has taken on a renewed urgency with the advent of new communications technologies and mass media eager to exploit them in the competition for viewers. Being blind to distant injustices is a luxury...

EDITORIALS

Sep 20, 1999

Negotiating with North Korea

The United States and North Korea have struck yet another deal. This time, the two parties seem to have negotiated a framework for the relaxation of U.S. economic sanctions against North Korea in exchange for the suspension of Pyongyang's ballistic missile testing program. Some ask, why does the U.S....

EDITORIALS

Sep 19, 1999

Targeting the tobacco menace

While smoking rates have plunged throughout the rest of the industrialized world, Japan continues to have the highest percentages of adults who smoke: 55.2 percent of men and 13.3 percent of women in 1998. Both rates represent increases over the figures for 1997, which were 52.7 percent and 11.6 percent...

EDITORIALS

Sep 17, 1999

Eyes on the ball at APEC

Ever since 1993, when U.S. President Bill Clinton turned the annual meeting of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation forum into a gathering for heads of state, critics have had a field day. Expectations have usually outpaced results, forcing participants to justify their attendance at what has been...

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

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