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August 27, 2025

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EDITORIALS

Feb 25, 2009

Ms. Clinton and U.S. strategy

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton concluded her first tour abroad as the foreign policy chief of the United States after visiting first Japan, then Indonesia and South Korea, and finally China. Her tour shows that President Barack Obama's administration is eager to work out long-term stable...

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 24, 2009

Communists looking better lately

The Japanese Communist Party, although still a minor factor in either house of the Diet, is gaining popularity among voters as its membership grows again and as an increasing number of people watch the Web sites of party chairman Kazuo Shii. This worries other political parties, since a general election...

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 24, 2009

Obama's part in an ethics-based economy

By Hans Kung

TUBINGEN, Germany — Many say the world financial crisis could not have been foreseen. Perhaps not by financiers and economists, but others who were watching how markets were developing — often with dismay — were more than worried.

EDITORIALS

Feb 24, 2009

Good interns where needed

An advisory panel for both the health ministry and the education ministry has proposed abolishing the current training system for medical interns and creating a new one. While the new system, expected to start in fiscal 2010, appears geared more toward securing enough doctors in the countryside, it carries...

EDITORIALS

Feb 24, 2009

Breaking the U.S.-Iran deadlock

In his attempt to find a new U.S. policy toward Iran, U.S. President Barack Obama is trying to engage the nation through direct dialogue, a move that Iran appears to have responded to rather positively. The Iraq war provided Iran with an opportunity to increase its influence on Arab nations and Mr. Obama...

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 24, 2009

Unbalanced bargaining game with China

By Du Tran

SINGAPORE — The territorial dispute in the South China Sea — referred to as the Spratly Islands dispute — used to be described as a major regional security flash point. Although core issues remain unresolved, economic integration and globalization, since the beginning of this decade, have temporarily...

COMMENTARY

Feb 23, 2009

Crisis hits the weak spots

By Kiroku Hanai

The worst crisis in a century is eroding the Japanese economy as a growing number of "nonregular" workers lose their jobs. The unemployment rate in December reached 4.4 percent, up 0.5 percentage point from the previous month — the steepest increase ever. The labor ministry estimates that by the end...

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 23, 2009

Success of Kosovo is Europe's responsibility

By Wolfgang Ischinger, Martti Ahtisaari and Albert Rohan

PRAGUE — On Feb. 17, 2008, Kosovo declared its independence and has so far been recognized by more than 50 countries representing close to 60 percent of the world's economic power. Interethnic violence — which many feared — has largely been avoided and the mass exodus of Serbs that some also predicted...

EDITORIALS

Feb 23, 2009

State of the world's children

With the media paying so much attention to the casualties of the economic slowdown, it would be easy to overlook a vital report on the grave situation faced by the world's two most vulnerable classes of citizens — women and children in impoverished countries.

EDITORIALS

Feb 22, 2009

The freedom of Mr. Khan

On its face, the decision to release Mr. Abdul Qadeer Khan from house arrest in Pakistan is a slap in the face of international opinion and a blow to efforts to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons. According to Pakistan's Foreign Ministry, the work of the world's greatest proliferator "is a closed...

COMMENTARY

Feb 22, 2009

Sea bump echoes Cold War risks

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON — A ship I once served in had a small brass plate on the bridge with a quotation from Thucydides, the Greek statesman, historian and seaman of the fourth century B.C.: "A collision at sea can ruin your whole day." It is still true.

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Feb 22, 2009

Shiftless apathy to the victims makes all Japanese guilty for the past

By Roger Pulvers

"When we speak of guilt about the past, we are not thinking about individuals, or even organizations, but rather a guilt that infects the entire generation that lives through an era — and in a sense the era itself.

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

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