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August 24, 2025
 

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COMMENTARY
Aug 10, 2011
Welfare state wins this budget war
By Robert J. Samuelson
With so much financial turmoil, it's important to grasp what last week's budget deal does and doesn't do. Note, for starters, that it won't create much "fiscal drag" on the economy. The spending cuts are simply too small in a $15 trillion annual economy. The deal might shave one-tenth of 1 percent off...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 10, 2011
Are sanctions helping to build Iran's bomb?
By Ray Takeyh
For years it was assumed that economic sanctions and diplomacy would produce a pliable negotiating partner in Iran. But Iran's truculence has effectively undermined the once-popular notion, while a degree of confusion and consternation has gripped the international community. The often-unstated hope...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 10, 2011
What in the world happened to free trade?
By Michael Sutton
These days nobody talks about free trade. It is widely believed that free trade is a relic of the past. Free trade, like the term globalization seems to be out of place in this world of polite environmentalism. Free trade has been replaced by the sensitive and caring "fair trade." In reality, the bedfellow...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 10, 2011
Hosni Mubarak's last laugh?
By Omar Ashour
August 3, 2011, will be remembered as a historic day in Egypt. Former President Hosni Mubarak was put on public trial, together with his two sons and his ex-interior minister, General Habib el-Adly. The repercussions for Egypt, indeed for the entire Arab world, will be profound.
EDITORIALS
Aug 10, 2011
Improve radiation mapping
The shipments of beef cows suspected of having been fed with radioactive rice straw to all the prefectures except Okinawa have underlined the radiation hazards caused by the disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plants.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 10, 2011
A key lesson from America's first debt crisis
By Mark Roe
The West is ensnared in a debt crisis. The United States, as everyone knows, came perilously close to defaulting on Aug. 2, and Standard & Poor's downgraded U.S. debt from AAA on Aug. 5.
EDITORIALS
Aug 10, 2011
Pension collection rates falling
The premium-collection rate for the basic pension (kokumin nenkin) for fiscal 2010 was 59.3 percent, down from fiscal 2009's 59.98 percent and a record low. The rate has fallen below 60 percent for two consecutive years and has continued to tumble for five straight years.
COMMENTARY
Aug 9, 2011
Threat from the antidemocrats
By Hugh Cortazzi
The recent massacre perpetrated by a lone gunman in Norway has made leaders in democratic countries review the threat to their societies from extremist anti-democratic elements.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 9, 2011
'Financial repression' and other remedies
By Anders Aslund
Early in the financial crisis, a major emerging-market investor told me: "This is not a global, but a semi-global financial crisis." He was right: it really was a crisis of the United States, Europe and Japan. Among emerging markets, only Eastern Europe was badly hit. Indeed, the crisis marks the emerging...
EDITORIALS
Aug 9, 2011
Citizens measuring radiation
In the wake of the Tohoku's radiation problems, the government's insistence of safety no longer seems credible to many people, especially those closest to the hardest-hit areas. To find out for themselves if their food is safe or not, a radiation measurement station has been set up by citizens in the...
EDITORIALS
Aug 9, 2011
Betrayal of child-rearing principle
The ruling Democratic Party of Japan and the two main opposition parties — the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito — struck an agreement on Aug. 4 to introduce an income cap for recipients of the child allowance. From fiscal 2012, child-rearing families whose annual income is above ¥9.6 million...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 9, 2011
Going beyond indefensible national interests
By Daniel Innerarity and Javier Solana
Humanity's main concerns today are not so much concrete evils as indeterminate threats. We are not worried by visible dangers, but by vague ones that could strike when least expected — and against which we are insufficiently protected. There are specific, identifiable dangers, but what worries us most...
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.
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.
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.
Man arrested over deadly stabbing of woman in Kobe
Masashi Tanimoto, 35, the suspect in the deadly stabbing a 24-year-old woman, is taken into custody in Kobe on Friday night.
Japanese city proposes two-hour daily limit for smartphone use
The Toyoake Municipal Government in Aichi Prefecture is planning to enact an ordinance to urge all smartphone users in the city to limit screen time to two hours a day outside work or school.
Germany's first sakemaker offers a bold brew of ideas
Reigen, Germany's first sake brewery, makes a diverse, nontraditional range of sake that includes fruit-flavored sips and wine barrel-aged renditions.
Alicia Keys closed Summer Sonic, but J-pop owned it
Summer Sonic’s 2025 lineup demonstrated its strength, showcasing the latest in J-pop, including “new kawaii” act Fruits Zipper.
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.

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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