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August 30, 2025

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COMMENTARY / World

Apr 2, 2007

Challenging Russia's energy dominance

By Keith C. Smith

WASHINGTON -- When Gazprom, Russia's natural-gas monopoly, cut off supplies to Ukraine and Georgia in January 2006, the move was widely seen as a clear warning of the Kremlin's willingness to use its energy resources to exert political influence over Europe.

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 2, 2007

Bulgaria's betrayal of EU norms of justice

By Krassimir Kanev

SOFIA -- When Bulgaria joined the European Union in January, I believed that my country had finally left its repressive past behind. But the recent arrest and threatened deportation of Annadurdy Hadjiev, a dissident from Turkmenistan who sought refuge here, suggests that some things never change.

EDITORIALS

Apr 1, 2007

Twenty years without end

In a bizarre 5-0 ruling that was 20 years in the making, the Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a lawsuit filed by the Taipei government against students living in a Kyoto dormitory. Forty years have passed since the lawsuit was filed. One cannot avoid the impression that the top court delayed the decision...

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Apr 1, 2007

Words to win hearts and minds the Japanese way

By Roger Pulvers

Over the years, the Japanese language has been called many things: inscrutably ambiguous, frustratingly vague and positively untranslatable.

EDITORIALS

Apr 1, 2007

Legal prop for a lie

A ruling Tuesday in Tokyo District Court that dismissed a damages suit filed by a former Mainichi Shimbun reporter defies common sense because of the gap between the ruling and the known facts, although the ruling has its own logic.

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 1, 2007

French vote validated Euro-skepticism

By Noelle Lenoir

PARIS -- Not long ago, an American political analyst compared France's loss of influence in Europe following its "no" vote in the 2005 referendum on the EU constitutional treaty with France's surrender in 1940. A provocative analogy, but is it apt?

EDITORIALS

Mar 31, 2007

Iraq, four years later

This month marked the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. To the surprise of virtually all the war's supporters, coalition forces are still present in Iraq. They are working to stabilize a country that appears to be on the brink of civil war. The continuing chaos and ever-growing number of fatalities...

EDITORIALS

Mar 30, 2007

Candidates out of the gate

The watershed Upper House election is a few months away. But local-level battles are in full swing. Election campaigns kicked off March 22 for gubernatorial elections scheduled April 8 in Tokyo and 12 other prefectures. Mayoral elections also are set that day in Sapporo, Shizuoka, Hamamatsu and Hiroshima,...

EDITORIALS

Mar 29, 2007

Tamiflu decision too late?

The health ministry has banned in principle the prescription of the influenza drug Tamiflu to people aged 10 to 19 in the wake of a series of cases in which young patients exhibited abnormal and dangerous behavior after taking the drug. This represents a turnabout from the ministry's earlier negative...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 29, 2007

Getting to 'yes' with Iran

By Christoph Bertram

BERLIN -- There is a wise American saying: "If you are in a hole, stop digging." The six governments that are considering the next steps to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb -- the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany -- should heed that advice. Otherwise, they could...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 29, 2007

Abe needlessly fans the flames

By Francis Fukuyama and William A. Masters

WASHINGTON -- Barely half a year into his premiership, Shinzo Abe is provoking anger across Asia and mixed feelings in his country's key ally, the United States. But will the Bush administration use its influence to nudge Abe away from inflammatory behavior?

EDITORIALS

Mar 29, 2007

Rising land prices highlight gap

In 2006, both nationwide average residential and commercial land prices rose for the first time in 16 years. The rises reflect the overall effect of the nation's longest postwar economic expansion, but it is clear that land-price increases in megalopolis areas are driving up national averages. In short,...

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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