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September 14, 2025
 

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EDITORIALS
May 31, 2012
Boosting agriculture opportunities
The Cabinet on May 24 endorsed a white book on agriculture for fiscal 2011. It gives priority to reviving agriculture in the coastal areas of the Tohoku region devastated by the 3/11 disasters. The region suffered damages amounting to ¥2.426 trillion, about 27 times that caused by the 1995 Kobe earthquake....
COMMENTARY
May 30, 2012
How the Afghan war ends
By Gwynne Dyer
The recent NATO summit in Chicago was mostly about how to get NATO troops out of Afghanistan without causing too much embarrassment to the Western governments that sent them, and a little bit about how to ensure that the Taliban don't take over again once Western troops leave.
COMMENTARY / World
May 30, 2012
Citizens are main stakeholders in rebuilding global governance
By Yasushi Kudo
The Council on Foreign Relations, a leading U.S. foreign policy institute and publisher of Foreign Affairs magazine, this spring launched a network of the world's influential policy institutes. The initiative aims at creating a forum for serious discussion among policy researchers to address pressing...
COMMENTARY
May 30, 2012
It's time U.S. dropped the college-for-all crusade
By Robert Samuelson
The college-for-all crusade has outlived its usefulness. Time to ditch it. Like the crusade to make all Americans homeowners, it's now doing more harm than good. It looms as the largest mistake in educational policy since World War II, even though higher education's expansion also ranks as one of America's...
EDITORIALS
May 30, 2012
Questionable high court decision
The Nagoya High Court on May 25 rejected a retrial request by Masaru Okunishi, an 86-year-old man who has been on death row for the fatal poisoning of five women in 1961. It was his seventh petition for a retrial.
COMMENTARY / World
May 30, 2012
Who will triumph in Egypt?
By Omar Ashour
Everything about Egypt's revolution has been unexpected, and the first-round results in the country's first-ever competitive presidential election are no different.
EDITORIALS
May 30, 2012
Looking at the lay judge system
Three years have passed since the lay judge system was introduced to bring citizens' perspective into criminal trials. According to the Supreme Court, 20,817 had people served as lay judges and 7,257 as backup lay judges by the end March. More than 95 percent of them said that participation in trials...
EDITORIALS
May 29, 2012
More forensic experts needed
The Diet is expected to soon start deliberating on two bills designed to improve procedures involving autopsies when unnatural deaths are suspected. The bills are a welcome step which will help rectify the current situation in which the police disregard most deaths they handle as having nothing to do...
EDITORIALS
May 29, 2012
Time for the Diet to act
There remains less than a month before the current Diet session is scheduled to end on June 21. Deliberations have started in a Lower House special committee on the tax and social welfare reform. Among the bills before the committee are two related to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's plan to raise the...
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
May 28, 2012
Overruling doubt to indict: underbelly of Japan's reform
The April 26 acquittal in Tokyo District Court of former Democratic Party of Japan chief Ichiro Ozawa signified total "defeat" for public prosecutors in view of the strong possibility, as a journalist on judicial matters said, that the prosecutors had maneuvered a "prosecution inquest committee," an...
COMMENTARY
May 28, 2012
China, too, faces challenge of an aging society
By Cesar Chelala
Parallel to its economic development, China is facing the challenge of a rapidly aging population. This is happening at a time when urbanization and industrialization is quickly increasing in the country. It is a trend that has weakened traditional family support networks, particularly for the elderly....
COMMENTARY / World
May 28, 2012
Why do economies stop growing?
By Michael Spence
Over the years, advanced and developing countries have experimented, sometimes deliberately and frequently inadvertently, with a variety of approaches to growth. Unfortunately, many of these strategies have turned out to have built-in limitations or decelerators — what one might call elements of unsustainability....
Japan's cutting-edge railgun successfully strikes target vessel
The Defense Ministry’s Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Agency (ATLA) conducted a ship-board railgun shooting test from June to early July this year with the support of the Maritime Self-Defense Force.
Is America ready for Japanese-style 7-Elevens?
Convenience stores are a fixture of Japanese life and 7-Eleven, a chain that began in the U.S. in 1927, opened its first store in Japan in 1974 — and then became wholly Japanese-owned in 2005 through parent company Seven & I Holdings.
‘Fairytale’ Shirakawago ranked one of the world’s most beautiful villages
Forbes and Unforgettable Travel Company have ranked Shirakawago in Gifu Prefecture as Asia's most beautiful village.
People rush to make furusato nozei donations ahead of tighter rules
A booth from the town of Betsukai in Hokkaido at an Amazon Japan furusato nо̄zei promotion event, on Sept. 5 in Tokyo's Minato Ward.
Aging Japan’s centenarian population nears 100,000
Shigeko Kagawa, Japan's oldest person at 114, in Yamatokoriyama, Nara Prefecture, on July 30
‘Fairytale’ Shirakawago ranked one of the world’s most beautiful villages
Forbes and Unforgettable Travel Company have ranked Shirakawago in Gifu Prefecture as Asia's most beautiful village.
Aging Japan’s centenarian population nears 100,000
Shigeko Kagawa, Japan's oldest person at 114, in Yamatokoriyama, Nara Prefecture, on July 30
Niinami’s ouster quick but not unusual as corporations protect reputation
Takeshi Niinami resigns as chairman and CEO of Suntory Holdings.
As Manila modernizes its military, new opportunities emerge for Tokyo
A Brahmos missile system is displayed during a rehearsal for a military parade in New Delhi in January. The Philippines will soon receive its second batch of the supersonic cruise missiles from India.
Shizuoka farmers fight to preserve sustainable tea method that’s steeped in tradition
As of August 2024, the number of confirmed chagusaba farmers had fallen to 302, just over half the 582 reported in 2015, according to the Shizuoka Chagusaba Farming Method Promotion Council.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight
By Mai Yoshikawa

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Maruhachi never sleeps in quest for better futons
Maruhachi never sleeps in quest for better futons

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