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September 06, 2025

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COMMENTARY / World

Mar 27, 2010

Finance and trade tremors

By Michael J. Boskin

PALO ALTO, Calif. — With the American and global economies in the early stages of postrecession recovery, serious questions remain about that recovery's strength and sustainability. In addition to traditional business-cycle concerns, there is a long list of policy tensions threatening to curb growth,...

EDITORIALS

Mar 27, 2010

China's leaders walk a fine line

While China's National People's Congress (NPC) does not function like a legislature in the West, its annual meeting is still an important date on the country's political calendar. At the conclave, the Chinese leadership lays out its policy agenda for the year ahead, and the government work program is...

EDITORIALS

Mar 26, 2010

Budget passed, but battles ahead

The fiscal 2010 budget and related bills were enacted Wednesday with their passage through the Upper House. The budget is the fifth-most quickly enacted in postwar history. Still, the Hatoyama administration has many problems left to solve.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 26, 2010

Nationality is no way to select IMF leader

By Barry Eichengreen

BERKELEY, Calif. — The International Monetary Fund, many say, has had a good crisis. As recently as three years ago, many observers thought that the Fund had outlived its usefulness and should be closed down. Since then, it has intervened in Hungary, Latvia, Iceland and Ukraine, among other crisis-stricken...

EDITORIALS

Mar 26, 2010

Early peek at postal plan

Postal reform minister Shizuka Kamei on Wednesday unveiled, rather prematurely, an outline of a bill meant to change the postal privatization plan. The proposed bill would increase the government's control of Japan Post group — a distinct departure from the full-privatization policy pushed by previous...

COMMENTARY

Mar 26, 2010

Pedophile-priest coverup transcends 'secular' belief

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON — The Biblical advice "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" is generally taken to mean that people should recognize the authority of the state in secular matters, but that is not necessarily what Jesus meant by it. It is certainly not the...

EDITORIALS

Mar 25, 2010

Speaking truth to power

In a last-minute move, the Democratic Party of Japan on Tuesday abandoned a plan to remove Mr. Yukio Ubukata, a vice secretary general of the party, from his post. The removal of Mr. Ubukata, a Lower House member, had been planned as punishment for his public criticism of DPJ Secretary General Ichiro...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 25, 2010

Wanted: more Japanese in the World Bank

By Hasan Tuluy

WASHINGTON — My visit to Japan (through May 26) comes at a time of momentous challenges for global development. The worst of the economic crisis appears to be behind us, but the recovery remains fragile and uneven. In the developing world, 43 poor countries are suffering effects of the recession, facing...

CARTOONS / DAHL'S JAPAN

Mar 25, 2010

EDITORIALS

Mar 25, 2010

The seed of secret deals

Japan paid the United States $320 million in costs for the 1972 reversion of Okinawa, according to the government's long-held official position. But on March 12, following an internal probe, Finance Minister Naoto Kan said that he believes the actual amount paid was much greater.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 24, 2010

Don't just wait for disaster

By Ban Ki Moon and Ban Ki-moon

NEW YORK — No country can afford to ignore the lessons of the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti. We cannot stop such disasters from happening. But we can dramatically reduce their impact, if the right disaster risk reduction measures are taken in advance.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 24, 2010

Catalyzing consumption and balancing growth

By Anoop Singh

WASHINGTON — China has weathered the great recession well. The world now waits to see if last year's impressive domestic demand growth can be sustained, and if China can, in the words of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, "give full play to the leading role of consumer demand in driving economic growth."

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

Tokyo Gas lights the way to carbon neutrality

Tokyo Gas lights the way to carbon neutrality

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