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COMMENTARY / World

May 23, 2005

Chinese protests stiffen Japanese resolve

By Richard Halloran

The Law of Unintended Consequences has been at work again, this time in the intense Japanese reaction to the Chinese demonstrations last month against Japan, some of them violent. In a word, the eruption in China has backfired in Japan.

COMMENTARY

May 23, 2005

Don't rely solely on America

By Robyn Lim

NAGOYA -- For more than 400 years, Great Britain played the role of global offshore balancer. Believing that it had neither permanent allies nor permanent enemies, but only permanent interests, Britain avoided entanglement on the Continent. Shifting its weight as required to prevent any potentially hostile...

EDITORIALS

May 22, 2005

Brave new words

Not so long ago -- six or eight months, perhaps -- we heard a young man describe something as "ginormous." We were impressed. Although we had never heard the word, its meaning was obvious: gigantic plus enormous. How clever of this person, we thought, to coin such a fun, economical new way of saying...

COMMENTARY / World

May 22, 2005

Betting on World War III

By David Wall

LONDON -- U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick has a way with words. On a recent trip to Europe he tried to persuade European Union politicians not to lift the arms embargo that they had imposed on China after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. If the EU lifted the ban, he said, the Europeans...

EDITORIALS

May 21, 2005

Trouble in Uzbekistan

In Uzbekistan, which likes to behave as a regional power in Central Asia, large-scale antigovernment protests by citizens have begun to shake the foundations of the authoritarian regime of President Islam Karimov. Demonstrations broke out last week in the town of Andijan in the Fergana Valley, where...

COMMENTARY

May 20, 2005

The right leader for Britain

By David Howell

LONDON -- British politics is now in a fluid state. The May 5 general election, which should have settled things, at least for four or five years, has unsettled everything in a very puzzling way.

COMMENTARY / World

May 20, 2005

Battling the windmills while Iraq burns

By Ramzy Baroud

DOHA, Qatar -- Cast aside the nonsensical rhetoric about U.S. President George W. Bush's ostensibly successful efforts to bolster democratic tendencies "sweeping" the Middle East, and you'll discover that the facts are not so rosy, with Iraq remaining the most horrific reminder.

EDITORIALS

May 20, 2005

A cautiously optimistic view

On the face of it, Japan's economy appears headed for a full-fledged recovery. In the first quarter of 2005, the gross domestic product (GDP) grew 1.3 percent from the previous quarter, or 5.3 percent in annualized terms, according to the Cabinet Office. It was the first solid quarterly growth since...

EDITORIALS

May 19, 2005

A victory of sorts for Mr. Chen

The people of Taiwan put a damper on "mainland fever" last weekend. In elections to create a special assembly that would amend the island's constitution, President Chen Shui-bian's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won a plurality of votes. The results are more an endorsement of the status quo, though,...

COMMENTARY

May 19, 2005

Soviet concessions at Yalta

By Gregory Clark

U.S. President George W. Bush rained heavily on Russian President Vladimir Putin's 60th anniversary war-end parade when he said the United States had renounced the Yalta agreement that conceded to Moscow postwar control over Eastern Europe. Putin had every right to be annoyed.

EDITORIALS

May 18, 2005

The 'Lebanonization' of Iraq

The situation in Iraq is looking increasingly like the one that prevailed in Lebanon during its prolonged civil war. Insurgent violence -- which subsided temporarily after the birth of a transitional government in late April -- has again increased in recent days. As fighting has intensified between U.S.-British...

COMMENTARY / World

May 18, 2005

Push North Korea toward real reform

By Jack Pritchard and Michael O'Hanlon

WASHINGTON -- As Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill returns to Northeast Asia for talks with U.S. allies on North Korea's nuclear program, the future of negotiations to resolve this terrifying matter has never been bleaker.

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.

How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan

By Megha Wadhwa

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Looking ahead to Yokohama’s Green × Expo 2027

Looking ahead to Yokohama’s Green × Expo 2027

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