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September 13, 2025

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EDITORIALS

Oct 15, 2004

Enough words, let's see some action

The Social Insurance Agency, which has been accused of corruption and criticized for wasteful use of pension-insurance premiums, has announced a set of countermeasures aimed at reforming itself through its own efforts. However, many of the measures are presumed to have been enforceable within the existing...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 15, 2004

China's ASEAN strategies

By Eric Teo Chu Cheow

SINGAPORE -- The world's attention has been focused on China's smooth political transition at the last Chinese Communist Party plenum, the possible overheating of the Chinese economy and its impressive haul of 32 gold medals at the Athens Olympics. But little has been said of Beijing's strategy for its...

EDITORIALS

Oct 14, 2004

A peace overture from Taiwan

Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian last weekend bid to improve relations with China. In his National Day speech, Mr. Chen called on Beijing to resume long-stalled talks and help build confidence and lower tension across the Taiwan Strait. Critically, he seems willing to resume talks on the basis of the...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 14, 2004

Crisis that hangs on hearsay

By David Wall

LONDON -- I am rapidly approaching the age of retirement. I am already cutting back on my activities, slimming down my portfolio of work and deciding what activities are wastes of time.

EDITORIALS

Oct 13, 2004

Challenges to just-opened Diet

A n extraordinary Diet session that opened Tuesday looks set for lively debates on a host of contentious issues, including the perennial problem of "politics and money." Adding to that is last month's reshuffle of the Cabinet and of top executive posts in both the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and...

EDITORIALS

Oct 11, 2004

Almost all wrong on Iraq

Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. While he certainly harbored ambitions to get them, the Iraqi programs to build them had decayed to become mere wisps of what they once were. That is the conclusion of the final report, released last week, of the chief U.S. weapons hunter, Mr. Charles...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 11, 2004

Taj Mahal survives foibles of humanity

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

MADRAS, India -- Sadly, India continues to let its heritage and history decay. For example, recently when a scholar from the country's prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi asked India's National Archives, also in the same city, for a document, the request was not entertained. The scholar...

COMMENTARY

Oct 11, 2004

New mindset is the only salve

By Gregory Clark

Japan-China relations are in trouble, again. The latest recriminations began with the fierce booing of a Japanese soccer team in Chongqing in July of this year. Few of Japan's many indignant commentators seemed to know that this large central China city had been the defenseless target of relentless Japanese...

EDITORIALS

Oct 10, 2004

An aviation milestone

I f it didn't cross your mind while watching video footage of SpaceShipOne streaking into space over California's Mojave Desert on Monday, there were plenty of commentators on hand to jog your sense of history. One was Gregg Maryniak, executive director of the foundation that offered a $10 million prize...

EDITORIALS

Oct 10, 2004

Time for Goodbye Kitty?

Japan has exported hundreds of things and ideas -- from haiku to Hondas, swordsmanship to sashimi -- of which it can be proud. Hello Kitty, the expressionless icon celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, is another story.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 10, 2004

Bush, Kerry agree on the biggest threat

By Richard Halloran

HONOLULU -- President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry evidently surprised -- and puzzled -- their audiences during their debate in the election campaign when they both pointed to nuclear proliferation as the greatest threat to the national security of the United States.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 10, 2004

Choosing how to intervene

By Ramesh Thakur

From Iraq to Darfur, the topic of international intervention to protect people from the brutality of their own governments remains a deeply divisive one for the international community. Western countries are likely to be the subjects not objects of intervention, and their worldview is colored by this...

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

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

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