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September 01, 2025

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EDITORIALS

Oct 16, 2007

The long shadow over Turkey

Domestic politics once again threatens to roil U.S. relations with a key ally. This time the offended nation is Turkey, which is angered and insulted by a U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee vote to label as genocide the deaths of Armenians killed in Turkey nearly a century ago. More...

EDITORIALS

Oct 14, 2007

Framed by the police

In a retrial of a man who had been found guilty of rape, the Takaoka branch of the Toyama District Court acquitted him Wednesday. Noting that his pretrial oral statements on which investigators had based their case against him were not trustworthy, the court ruled that the man is not the perpetrator....

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Oct 14, 2007

To embrace political renewal or cling to continuity

By Roger Pulvers

Every four years Americans want to believe they can reinvent themselves. Elections for the presidency offer them the opportunity, as they faithfully see it, to renounce the past and "get this country moving again."

EDITORIALS

Oct 13, 2007

Empty gestures on climate change

U.S. President George W. Bush has been hailed for a decisive change in his thinking about climate change. After rejecting the Kyoto treaty early in his presidency, he no longer questions the fact of "climate change" and has attempted to claim a leading role in the international fight to combat this problem....

COMMENTARY

Oct 13, 2007

Democracies' double standard

By Brahma Chellaney

NEW DELHI — The repression let loose by Burma's (Myanmar) military junta has fittingly drawn international outrage. But the indignation and new wave of U.S.-led sanctions also obscure an inconvenient truth: Promotion of freedom has become a diplomatic instrument to target not China — the world's...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 12, 2007

Fukuda could resolve issue over Yasukuni by visiting

By Hisahiko Okazaki

I believe it would be good for Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to visit Yasukuni Shrine during the annual autumn festival. I am very well aware that the prime minister himself is extremely cautious about the visit. But, objectively speaking, the time is getting ripe to resolve the Yasukuni problem.

EDITORIALS

Oct 12, 2007

Tardy decision by sumo executives

The Japan Sumo Association has dismissed stable master (the former) Tokitsukaze in connection with the death of 17-year-old sumo wrestler Tokitaizan in July shortly after a practice session. The unanimous decision by JSA executives is their heaviest punishment: Tokitsukaze will be expelled from the sumo...

COMMENTARY

Oct 12, 2007

Forcing defeat from the jaws of victory

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON — This week is the sixth anniversary of the start of U.S. airstrikes against al-Qaida and its Taliban hosts in Afghanistan. It was a very clever political-military operation, and by December of 2001 all of Afghanistan was under the control of the United States and its local allies for a total...

EDITORIALS

Oct 12, 2007

The case for recording confessions

The National Police Agency has joined discussions with related offices about the types of criminal procedures to be used when the lay judge system is introduced in May 2009. The other offices are the Supreme Court, the Justice Ministry, the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office and the Japan Federation of...

COMMENTARY

Oct 11, 2007

Six-party talks make progress

By Ralph Cossa

HONOLULU — The joint declaration from the recently concluded round of six-party talks in Beijing points to a significant step forward, provided Pyongyang follows through as promised with a significant series of denuclearization steps between now and the end of the year. As has often been the trend...

EDITORIALS

Oct 11, 2007

Darfur deteriorates

After years of genocidal attacks, many thought the situation in the Darfur region of Sudan could not get worse. But a raid on African Union (AU) peacekeepers was proof that things could indeed deteriorate further. The bold attack threatens to derail international efforts to bring peace to the shattered...

COMMENTARY

Oct 11, 2007

'Silly summit' produced serious results

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES — It sure opened up as one big oddball of a summit.

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

Tokyo Gas lights the way to carbon neutrality

Tokyo Gas lights the way to carbon neutrality

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