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August 24, 2025

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COMMENTARY / World

Dec 25, 2009

The challenge of Seoul's G20 chairmanship

By Barry Eichengreen and Rose Horowitch

BERKELEY, Calif. — On Jan. 1, South Korea takes over the Group of 20 chairmanship from the United Kingdom. Korea is not the first emerging market to chair the G20, but it is the first to do so since the global financial crisis. And it is the first to do so since the G20 emerged as the steering committee...

COMMENTARY

Dec 25, 2009

Ever-widening pay gaps

By Hugh Cortazzi

LONDON — According to recent reports, chief executives of top British companies are now paid 81 times more than the average British worker. The pay gap has nearly doubled in the past decade. There is no justification for this trend.

EDITORIALS

Dec 24, 2009

Holding steady on gasoline tax

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Tuesday decided to maintain the current rates on gasoline and other road-related taxes throughout fiscal 2010 even though the road-related tax system will be overhauled by April 2010. The abolition of surcharges on road-related taxes was a main campaign pledge of the...

EDITORIALS

Dec 24, 2009

Japan pressed on Futenma

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Japanese Ambassador to the United States Ichiro Fujisaki to the State Department on Monday for an unscheduled meeting. She reportedly called for Japan to promptly implement the 2006 bilateral accord to move the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station...

CARTOONS / DAHL'S JAPAN

Dec 24, 2009

Magi Vs Magistrate

COMMENTARY

Dec 24, 2009

Aftermath of Copenhagen

By Gwynne Dyer

"The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport," said John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, on Friday night. "There are no targets for carbon cuts and no agreement on a legally binding treaty."

COMMENTARY

Dec 24, 2009

No winners emerge from COP15 conference

By Frank Ching

If the climate change conference in Copenhagen failed to meet the expectations of both developed and developing countries, it did make one thing clear: The United States remains the most powerful developed country and China is acknowledged as a leading representative of the developing countries, though...

EDITORIALS

Dec 23, 2009

Erratic confessions addressed

On Dec. 15 the Supreme Court upheld lower court decisions ordering a retrial of two men convicted in a 1967 murder-robbery case in the town of Tone, Ibaraki Prefecture. Although no material evidence came forth in the case, the life sentences given to the two men were finalized in 1978 on the strength...

EDITORIALS

Dec 23, 2009

Consequences of a bank policy

The Supreme Court on Dec. 7 scrapped an earlier ruling that had found three former executives of the now-defunct Nippon Credit Bank guilty of window-dressing and ordered the Tokyo High Court to retry the case. The three had been convicted of submitting false financial statements for the business year...

EDITORIALS

Dec 22, 2009

Pragmatism, realism prevail

They struck a deal in Copenhagen. As expected, it satisfies few and angers many. That means it is probably the best deal that could have been reached given the profound differences among the 193 nations that negotiated the agreement. The document that was finalized urges, but does not require, deep cuts...

COMMENTARY

Dec 22, 2009

Travails of a 'young war criminal'

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON — Alan Watkins is my favorite British journalist. Well into his 70s now, each week he still produces an elegant and knowing column, usually about British politics. And with a casual understatement that you might easily mistake for irony, he has for the past six years regularly referred to former...

COMMENTARY

Dec 22, 2009

Rice prices rock a buoyant economic boat

By Michael Richardson

SINGAPORE — Asia is leading the world economy out of recession. The region's most populous nations — China, India and Indonesia — appear to doing particularly well, setting the pace for renewed growth in Northeast Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia.

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

Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after

Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after

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