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August 24, 2025

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COMMENTARY

Dec 13, 2012

The art of war, Chinese style

By Brahma Chellaney

The recent 50th anniversary of China's invasion of India attracted much discussion, especially within India. Yet the debate shied away from drawing the broader, long-term lessons for Asian security.

EDITORIALS

Dec 13, 2012

North Korea remains defiant

North Korea on Wednesday morning launched a long-range multistage rocket and claims to have put a satellite into orbit. In a preliminary assessment, the United States also said that an object carried by the rocket went into orbit. Pyongyang's action must be condemned in the strongest terms. It ignored...

EDITORIALS

Dec 13, 2012

Changing how Japan is governed

One reason for the Democratic Party of Japan's victory in the 2009 Lower House election was its call for stronger devolution. Apparently taking a cue from the DPJ's gains three years ago, many political parties now call for establishing a doshu system, which would divide Japan into several administrative...

COMMENTARY

Dec 12, 2012

U.K. party leaders playing politics with press rules

By Tina Burrett

Most people like talking about themselves, including those in the press. Since publication of Lord Justice Leveson's report into press culture, practices and ethics at the end of last month, Britain's newspapers have been consumed with discussing their own future. From among the many recommendations...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 12, 2012

An energy-independent U.S. still has Middle East interests

By Zaki Laidi

For some time now, a certain strategic vision has been gaining traction: the United States is becoming energy-independent, paving the way for its political retreat from the Middle East and justifying its strategic "pivot" toward Asia. This view seems intuitively correct, but is it?

EDITORIALS

Dec 12, 2012

Getting off the deflationary path

Political parties that are competing in the Dec. 16 Lower House election should present convincing proposals to prevent Japan from continuing down the deflationary path. But they must be careful to ensure that their efforts to end deflation will not lead to price rises that are not supported by enlivened...

COMMENTARY

Dec 12, 2012

Coasting to climate disaster

By Gwynne Dyer

They made some progress at the annual December round of the international negotiations on controlling climate change, held this year in Qatar. They agreed that the countries that cause the warming should compensate the ones that suffer the most from it. The principle, known as the Loss and Damage mechanism,...

EDITORIALS

Dec 12, 2012

Footing for social welfare

Anational conference for social welfare reform, an advisory body based on a law enacted in August with the support of the Democratic Party of Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito, was inaugurated Nov. 30 with 15 scholars and experts serving as its members.

COMMENTARY

Dec 12, 2012

U.S. economy creating a lost generation

By Robert J. Samuelson

This is not a good time to be starting out in life. Jobs are scarce, and those that exist often pay unexpectedly low wages. Beginning a family — always stressful and uncertain — is increasingly a stretch. The weak economy begets weak family formation. We instinctively know this; several new studies...

COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE

Dec 11, 2012

Left-leaning candidates worry South Korean business circles

The South Korean government may well lean toward the left regardless of who wins the Dec. 19 presidential election, triggering concern among South Korean business leaders that they could be heading into another "black decade."

COMMENTARY

Dec 11, 2012

Mom's lesson in the sand offers hope for peace

By Cesar Chelala

As a writer on human rights issues I don't lack reasons for concern. There are not too many countries nowadays where human rights in some form are not abused, where violence does not strike in one of its multiple forms.

EDITORIALS

Dec 11, 2012

Hawkish approach won't help

One major issue in the campaign for the Dec. 16 Lower House election is the diplomatic dispute with China over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. Some politicians and others on the Japanese side are taking a hawkish stance, but such an approach will only harden attitudes on the Chinese side,...

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

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