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August 27, 2025

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EDITORIALS

Jul 12, 2010

Russian games up north

The Russian military carried out a drill July 3-4 on Etorofu Island, off Hokkaido, ignoring a July 2 demand by Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada that it refrain from doing so there. Japan calls Etorofu and three other islands (including one islet group), northeast of Hokkaido, the Northern Territories,...

COMMENTARY

Jul 12, 2010

Scholars flunk George W. Bush

By Cesar Chelala

NEW YORK — George W. Bush ranks among the five U.S. presidents who accomplished the least while in office, according to the Siena College Research Institute's latest survey of 238 presidential scholars. The institute has conducted the poll annually for the past 28 years.

EDITORIALS

Jul 11, 2010

Motive for clean energy

Up to 9.5 million liters of oil continue to spew daily into the Gulf of Mexico since BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off the coast of Louisiana exploded April 20, killing 11 workers. U.S. President Barack Obama has called the oil spill "the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced."

COMMENTARY

Jul 11, 2010

Treason of the attorney

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON — Eighty years ago, just after the First World War and with the world rapidly sliding toward the next, the French philosopher Julien Benda wrote a book called "The Treason of the Clerks"— "clerks" in the medieval sense, educated men, intellectuals, who despite their high calling chose to serve...

EDITORIALS

Jul 11, 2010

Tough call on sumo for NHK

The Japan Sumo Association, which has been rocked by the gambling scandal, was dealt more blows last week. On Tuesday, NHK decided not to provide live television coverage of the 15-day Nagoya Grand Sumo Tournament. On Wednesday, police raided Onomatsu and other sumo stables for evidence of suspected...

CARTOONS / DAHL'S JAPAN

Jul 11, 2010

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Jul 11, 2010

For Japan's own good, it's high time to get into that holiday thing

By Roger Pulvers

It may surprise you, but one of the trickiest words to translate from Japanese into English is isogashii. Every dictionary will tell you that its closest equivalent is "busy," and you'd be hard pressed to find a native Japanese speaker who disagreed with this.

CARTOONS / ZERO GRAVITY

Jul 11, 2010

EDITORIALS

Jul 10, 2010

The kindling in Kyrgyzstan

There is blame enough to go around for the hellish situation that has descended on Kyrgyzstan. Forces loyal to former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev are said to have provoked the violence that has affected 8 percent of the country's population. The government's response has been ham-fisted and there are...

EDITORIALS

Jul 9, 2010

Startup to toll-free driving

The government on June 28 started making part of the nation's expressway system toll free. The trial — which is being carried out along 50 sections of 37 routes mainly in the countryside, and covers 1,652 km or about 20 percent of the expressway system — could eventually lead to an entirely toll-free...

EDITORIALS

Jul 9, 2010

'The Cove' screenings on course

Six movie theaters — in Hachinohe (Aomori Prefecture), Sendai, Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka and Kyoto — on July 3 started showing "The Cove," a documentary film about dolphin hunting in the whaling town of Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture. There have been no reports of big disturbances.

COMMENTARY / World

Jul 9, 2010

Actions belie Turkey's 'zero conflict' policy

By Shlomo Avineri

JERUSALEM — A few months before he became Turkey's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's chief adviser, met with a group of Middle Eastern academics and policy experts, including Arabs and Israelis. With his academic background and immense erudition, he succeeded...

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

Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after

Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after

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