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August 27, 2025

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CARTOONS / DAHL'S JAPAN

Feb 23, 2012

EDITORIALS

Feb 23, 2012

Relief over another Greek deal

Greece and the European Union have reached another deal. A second bailout will avert a Greek bankruptcy, although the reprieve is likely to be only temporary. The harsh austerity measures that the EU is demanding as a condition of its aid, ironically, are likely to make it even harder for Athens to reach...

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 22, 2012

A 'stewpid' time to raise VAT

By Kevin Rafferty

The International Monetary Fund has joined Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and leading politicians and bureaucrats in laying down a remorseless softening up barrage of facts, figures, argument and just plain determination that the country's consumption tax should rise as quickly as possible.

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 22, 2012

Urban pride key to our modern sense of self

By Avner De-Shalit and Daniel A. Bell

What is the big story of our age? It depends on the day, but if we count by centuries, then surely humanity's urbanization is a strong contender. Today, more than half of the world's population lives in cities, compared to less than 3 percent in 1800. By 2025, China alone is expected to have 15 "mega-cities,"...

COMMENTARY

Feb 22, 2012

Amazing GRACE can measure world's ice loss

By Michael Richardson

One of the main climate change concerns for Japan and other Asian countries with valuable and densely-populated low-lying coastal land is how much of their land may be threatened by rising sea levels and storm surges as the century advances.

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 22, 2012

Why Iran thinks it needs the bomb

By Ray Takeyh

Bombastic claims of nuclear achievement, threats to close critical international waterways, alleged terrorist plots and hints of diplomatic outreach — all are emanating from Tehran right now.

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 22, 2012

At the end of a loved one's life, why is it so hard to let go?

By Craig Bowron

I know where this phone call is going. I'm on the hospital wards, and a physician in the emergency room downstairs is talking to me about an elderly patient who needs to be admitted to the hospital. The patient is new to me, but the story is familiar: He has several chronic conditions — heart failure,...

EDITORIALS

Feb 22, 2012

Joining the Hague convention

The Legislative Council of the Justice Ministry earlier this month submitted an outline of domestic bills related to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction to Justice Minister Toshio Ogawa. The government plans to submit a bill to approve Japan's joining the convention...

COMMENTARY

Feb 22, 2012

Campaign finance reform fails to reach goals

By Robert Samuelson

The emergence of super PACs shows once again that "campaign finance reform" has failed abysmally. After nearly four decades, it has achieved none of its goals. It has not purged politics of big donations, nor cured public cynicism about the influence of the rich, nor made elected leaders more trusted....

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 21, 2012

Dangerous myth of China as a harmless tiger

By Yu Jie

Chinese dissident writers exiled to the West today get a very different response than Soviet writers received not so long ago.

EDITORIALS

Feb 21, 2012

Rethink national ID plan

The government has submitted to the Diet a bill to introduce a "common number system" under which the government would issue each citizen with an electronic chip-equipped ID card that contains the cardholder's personal information for taxation and social welfare purposes.

EDITORIALS

Feb 21, 2012

Court warning to prosecution

In the trial of former Democratic Party of Japan leader Mr. Ichiro Ozawa, who is accused of violating the Political Funds Control Law, the Tokyo District Court on Feb. 17 rejected as evidence the prosecution's record of certain oral statements made by his former secretary concerning Mr. Ozawa's alleged...

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

Muji has been sustainable from the beginning

Muji has been sustainable from the beginning

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