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August 25, 2025
 

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COMMENTARY / World
Mar 23, 2010
Former POW rejects idea that DPJ is anti-American
By Lester Tenney
CARLSBAD, Calif. — As a survivor of Imperial Japan's infamous prisoner-of-war camps, forced labor at a Mitsui coal mine in Fukuoka and the horrors of the Bataan Death March in the Philippines, I know anti-Americanism when I see it. Some say the ruling Democratic Party of Japan is anti-American. I know...
EDITORIALS
Mar 23, 2010
New foundations for contract law
A panel of the Justice Ministry's Legislative Council has begun discussing revisions to the law of obligations, which sets down rules related to personal liability for sales and other commercial contracts. The discussions come at the request of Justice Minister Keiko Chiba.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 23, 2010
Redressing incentives for executives to fail
By Lucian Bebchuk, Alma Cohen and Holger Spamann
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — In a report just filed with the U.S. court that is overseeing the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, a court-appointed examiner described how Lehman's executives made deliberate decisions to pursue an aggressive investment strategy, take on greater risks and substantially increase leverage....
EDITORIALS
Mar 23, 2010
When airports eat each other
Japan has 98 airports. The transport ministry's recent survey of 72 of them indicates that the economic viability of many airports is low. Unless local governments and concerned businesses make serious efforts to attract more passengers, some airports may be forced to close.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Mar 22, 2010
A haphazard approach to making foreign policy
"I wonder to what extent the Hatoyama administration relies on bureaucrats for its foreign policy," a diplomat from a Middle Eastern country said recently. "It has not expressed its own messages on issues such as Iran's nuclear weapons programs and the Mideast peace process. That makes me wonder who...
EDITORIALS
Mar 22, 2010
Those aging overpasses
In making recommendations to the infrastructure and farm ministries concerning the maintenance of the nation's road overpasses, the internal affairs ministry has said that the number of overpasses at least 50 years old will rapidly increase and that serious damage frequently happens already.
EDITORIALS
Mar 22, 2010
Pledge torments Mr. Hatoyama
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama faces a high hurdle in finding a substitute site for U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Okinawa. His statements so far have helped create high expectations among Okinawans that the Futenma function will be moved outside their prefecture.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 21, 2010
Trial by crisis for future growth
By Leszek Balcerowicz
WARSAW — Episodes like the current financial crisis seriously disrupt economic growth. But the question that we should be asking concerns such episodes' impact on longer-term development. And that question has attracted surprisingly little interest.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 21, 2010
Let 'occupation tax' make the settlers pay
By Ezzedine Choukri Fishere
CAIRO — Arab intellectuals and policymakers have often accused Europe of using financial generosity to cover up its political impotence over the Arab-Israeli conflict. If Europe is to be taken seriously as a global player, they argue, it must also flex some muscle when it delivers the money.
EDITORIALS
Mar 21, 2010
Trouble in the workers' paradise
The reported execution of a ranking North Korean economic official is a reminder of the high personal price that can be paid for policy failures in that country. The official may be a scapegoat, but the sentence is a sign of the Pyongyang leadership's concern about the toll that a botched currency reform...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 21, 2010
Who ever could make war if they saw it through children's eyes?
By Roger Pulvers
The misery of war remains for many long years as scar tissue in the minds of children deeply traumatized by it. And yet, there are not many works of fiction or nonfiction that have conveyed the confusion and pain felt by such children.
CARTOONS / DAHL'S JAPAN
Mar 21, 2010
Hokey Pokey
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.
Character-crazed Japan has little appetite for Labubu
A pop-up advertisement for the newly opened Chiikawa Park in Tokyo's Ikebukuro neighborhood demonstrates how the country is chockful of cute characters — to the detriment of trends like Labubu.
Emperor emeritus and empress emerita visit postwar settlement
Emperor Emeritus Akihito and Empress Emerita Michiko strolled through a cabbage field in Ohinata settlement in Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture, on Saturday.
At meeting rich in symbolism, Ishiba and South Korea's Lee agree to steadily build ties
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba shake hands at joint press announcement after summit talks in Tokyo on Saturday.
Are 'coolcations' the answer for Japan's heat-weary tourists?
Hikers on a trail in Hakuba, Nagano Prefecture. As extreme heat continues to grip Japan, a tectonic shift may be underway in the nation’s summer tourism scene as more people gravitate toward cooler destinations.
Are 'coolcations' the answer for Japan's heat-weary tourists?
Hikers on a trail in Hakuba, Nagano Prefecture. As extreme heat continues to grip Japan, a tectonic shift may be underway in the nation’s summer tourism scene as more people gravitate toward cooler destinations.
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.

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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