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COMMENTARY

Jun 12, 2007

School tinkering that hurts

By Takamitsu Sawa

The education ministry is pushing university reform based on a U.S. model. As I wrote in April, the ministry in 1990 introduced a policy of sharply expanding graduate school admission quotas. In the next year, it relaxed undergraduate restrictions in graduate-level liberal-arts programs, allowing even...

EDITORIALS

Jun 12, 2007

Mr. Zoellick to the World Bank

U.S. President George W. Bush has picked Mr. Robert Zoellick to be president of the World Bank. Mr. Zoellick, a former U.S. trade representative and a former deputy secretary of state, is almost certain to be confirmed by the World Bank board. The best thing that can be said about the nomination is that...

EDITORIALS

Jun 12, 2007

Justice for Lebanon's late leader

A special court that the U.N. Security Council voted to set up to prosecute the February 2005 murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri came into force on Sunday. The U.N. vote was a direct challenge to Syria, which has been implicated in the killing while denying any involvement.

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Jun 10, 2007

In Japan, show reverence where it's due (or not)

By Roger Pulvers

Japan is the country that I feel most at home in. Yet, despite having arrived in 1967, and living here for the better part of the intervening 40 years, I still see myself as the odd man out in one particular aspect. I just can't "act Japanese" — if you will excuse the generalization — when it comes...

EDITORIALS

Jun 10, 2007

Another frustrating G8 summit

One step forward, one step back. That's likely to be the verdict on the just-ended summit of the Group of Eight industrial powers. Progress came on climate change; the retreat was on AIDS. Yet the trimming of ambitions regarding AIDS policy should shape perceptions of the historic deal on greenhouse-gas...

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 9, 2007

Climate change raises threat of water wars

By Jean-michel Severino and Mikhail Gorbachev

PRAGUE — The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released alarming data on the consequences of global warming in some of the world's poorest regions. By 2100, 1 billion to 3 billion people worldwide are expected to suffer from water scarcity. Global warming will increase evaporation...

EDITORIALS

Jun 9, 2007

Surveillance of citizens

The Japanese Communist Party has made public copies of two documents it says were prepared by the Ground Self-Defense Force's information security units during a period when grassroots opposition to the dispatch of the GSDF unit to Iraq was strong. The documents are said to show detailed surveillance...

EDITORIALS

Jun 9, 2007

Energy savings start at home

The white paper on the environment and a recycling-based society approved by the Cabinet expresses serious concern about global warming and stresses the importance of individual citizens taking conscious action to alleviate environmental problems and to help slow global warming. The white paper comes...

EDITORIALS

Jun 8, 2007

Popularity takes a tumble

The approval rating for the Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has hit a record low since he came into power last September. A telephone poll at the beginning of this month by Kyodo News shows that the support rate has sunk to 35.8 percent, a drop of 11.8 points from mid-May and a big slide from the...

EDITORIALS

Jun 8, 2007

Defection from the North

Four North Koreans — a married couple and their two adult sons — were spotted in a small boat off Fukaura port in Aomori Prefecture last Saturday and are now in custody. They arrived in a 7.3-meter-long open wooden boat equipped with an old outboard engine. They say they left a port near the northeastern...

COMMENTARY

Jun 8, 2007

When getting rich impoverishes society

By Tom Plate

NEW DELHI — Serious social tension roils here and there across the globe. Gaps between poor and rich rarely seem to shrink and in most places continue to enlarge. The fairest assessment of economic and informational globalization (the greatest pretender as an income gap-narrower since orthodox Marxism)...

COMMENTARY

Jun 8, 2007

Vanity in spinning a legacy

By Hugh Cortazzi

LONDON — Leaders of the summit countries have been changing. Gerhard Schroeder, the German Social Democratic chancellor of Germany, was the first to go. His replacement, Angela Merkel, is a Christian Democrat but leading a coalition with the Social Democrats.

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.

What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Muji has been sustainable from the beginning

Muji has been sustainable from the beginning

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