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August 27, 2025

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COMMENTARY

Sep 21, 2008

The Japanese knack for choking in a slump

By Gregory Clark

Japan used to be held up in the United States as a model example, both of efficient economic management and efficient enterprise management. That economic management image disappeared with the "bubble" burst of the early 1990s.

EDITORIALS

Sep 21, 2008

New, centenarian society

This year's Respect for the Aged Day, last Monday, found a lot more aged to respect than ever before. According to Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry statistics, over 36,000 people in Japan are now over 100 years old. Many others are close behind. Over 28 million people were aged 65 and over, one-quarter...

EDITORIALS

Sep 21, 2008

The struggling majority

When the white gloves and over-amplified speeches come out for the general-election campaigns this fall, one widely shared anxiety should not be ignored — the worsening financial condition of households. Over 57 percent of households, the highest ever, reported struggling with finances, according to...

EDITORIALS

Sep 20, 2008

Pakistan ensnared

In a sign of growing concern over the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and a renewed commitment to kill or capture al-Qaida's top leadership, the United States has launched military strikes across the border into Pakistan. These attacks signal U.S. frustration with Pakistan's efforts to battle...

EDITORIALS

Sep 19, 2008

Turning point for Zimbabwe

In what could be a historic moment for Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe and Mr. Morgan Tsvangirai, head of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), have signed a power-sharing agreement.

COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE

Sep 19, 2008

Ozawa bets on a takeover

Ichiro Ozawa, leader of the No. 1 opposition Democratic Party of Japan, has long been known as a gambler, both at the casino and in the political arena. When he was his 40s, he often went to London to study British parliamentary politics, which he regarded as a model of political reform. While there,...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 19, 2008

What goes around comes around for Russia

Russia invades an eastern European republic, sends its navy to Latin America for military exercises in America's backyard, and threatens to cut off energy supplies to western Europe. This reads like a chapter out of Cold War history.

EDITORIALS

Sep 18, 2008

Staving off deeper turmoil

Just as the financial crisis resulting from the burst of the U.S. housing bubble appeared to have peaked, 158-year-old investment bank Lehman Brothers has collapsed and Merrill Lynch has agreed to be taken over by Bank of America Corp. Meanwhile, two days after U.S. authorities refused to bail out Lehman...

EDITORIALS

Sep 18, 2008

Day of the war makers

The Japanese well remember Dec. 8, 1941, as the day when Japan went to war with the United States, attacking Hawaii's Pearl Harbor with aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy. They also don't forget Aug. 15, 1945, the day when Japan surrendered to the Allied Powers in World War II.

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 18, 2008

Asia still suffering from a 'leadership deficit'

By Robert Sutter

WASHINGTON — Predictions of the 21st century as an Asian century led by burgeoning Asian economic, political and military powers appear on course with the impressive and growing wealth and power of such rising Asian states as China and India, backed by the already well developed economies of Japan,...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 18, 2008

Japan spinning its wheels

By Masahiro Matsumura

OSAKA — To lose one prime minister may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two in one year looks like carelessness. That paraphrase by Oscar Wilde aptly sums up the current state of Japanese politics, given the serial resignations of Prime Ministers Shinzo Abe and Yasuo Fukuda.

EDITORIALS

Sep 17, 2008

SIA cheating pensioners

On the basis of an investigation by a panel of the internal affairs ministry, the Social Insurance Agency has admitted that a staff worker in 1995 instructed a Tokyo company president to lower the figures of the employees' monthly incomes in pension records so that the company could pay lower pension...

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

Looking ahead to Yokohama’s Green × Expo 2027

Looking ahead to Yokohama’s Green × Expo 2027

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