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COMMENTARY / World

Oct 27, 2009

Painful past must be put to rest for good

By Dominique Moisi

PARIS — A nation's relationship with its past is crucial to its present and its future, to its ability to "move on" with its life, or to learn from its past errors so as not to repeat them. This includes the past that isn't dead and buried — "in fact, it is not even past," as William Faulkner famously...

EDITORIALS

Oct 26, 2009

Hub idea deserves airing

Transport minister Seiji Maehara's idea of turning Tokyo's Haneda airport into a 24-hour international hub has sparked controversy. Setting his eye on the completion of Haneda's fourth runway in October 2010, he wants to make Haneda a hub in East Asia by increasing the number of international flights...

COMMENTARY

Oct 26, 2009

Paranoids feast on China's 'peaceful rising'

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES — Paranoid people tend to live longer, goes the old joke. And so it is in this spirit only — not out of a desire to engage in Cold War China-bashing — that we raise concerns about China. So here's the paranoid's question: Just what is China really up to?

EDITORIALS

Oct 26, 2009

No-nukes action plan

The International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, an international panel co-chaired by former Japanese and Australian foreign ministers Ms. Yoriko Kawaguchi and Mr. Gareth Evans, agreed Oct. 20 on an action plan toward global nuclear disarmament after a three-day meeting in the...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 26, 2009

Challenging Obama's word

By Kevin Rafferty

DELHI, India — During his U.S. presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that he would be prepared to meet with so-called rogue rulers like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran or Kim Jong Il of North Korea in the interests of peace.

EDITORIALS

Oct 25, 2009

A runoff in Afghanistan

Afghanistan will hold a runoff election after all. After weeks of intense speculation, fueled by allegations of fraud in the first round of the presidential ballot, election monitors have concluded that incumbent President Hamid Karzai did not win an outright majority.

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Oct 25, 2009

'Mao's Last Dancer' inspires with his leaps and honest grounding

By Roger Pulvers

I was down in Sydney a few weeks ago and managed to catch the world premiere of Australian director Bruce Beresford's film, "Mao's Last Dancer." It is a beautiful story, beautifully told, in a film that combines the personal and the epic in an era of traumatic change for China.

EDITORIALS

Oct 24, 2009

Clarifying two decades of errors

The Utsunomiya District Court on Wednesday began a retrial of Mr. Toshikazu Sugaya, who had served 17 1/2 years of a life sentence in prison for killing a child until he was released in June on the strength of a new DNA test.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Oct 24, 2009

Standing army still the prize peace-breaker

By Hiroaki Sato

NEW YORK — The news that President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize immediately brought to mind comparisons with former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who received the same prize back in 1973. In the outpourings of sharply divided reactions that ensued, a great many, it turned...

EDITORIALS

Oct 24, 2009

Balancing act begins

Budgetary requests for fiscal 2010 from all ministries and agencies — the first such requests under the Hatoyama administration — total a record ¥95.038 trillion. Compared with the fiscal 2009 main and supplementary budgets (¥102 trillion-plus), the sum is smaller, but not against the initial fiscal...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 23, 2009

A day to act in the name of planetary justice

By Peter Singer

PRINCETON, N.J. — What we are doing to our planet, to our children and grandchildren, and to the poor, by our heedless production of greenhouse gases, is one of the great moral wrongs of our age. This Saturday is a day to stand up against this injustice.

EDITORIALS

Oct 23, 2009

Makeover of postal privatization

The Cabinet this week decided to revamp the two-year-old privatization process for Japan Post group. The decision, which responds to fears among some people that Japan Post group may curtail services in the countryside, emphasizes the public role of Japan Post group.

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.

What comes after 100?

By Tomoko Otake

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Tsukuba massif granite, one of the world’s few heritage stones

Tsukuba massif granite, one of the world’s few heritage stones

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