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September 02, 2025

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EDITORIALS

Oct 29, 2009

DPJ good times continue

Victories for the Democratic Party of Japan in Sunday's Upper House by-elections in Kanagawa and Shizuoka prefectures show that the party is still enjoying solid support some 40 days after the inauguration of the DPJ-led government. The elections were the first Diet-level elections since the Aug. 30...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 29, 2009

Reports of the dollar's death are exaggerated

By Barry Eichengreen

BERKELEY, Calif. — The blogosphere is abuzz with reports of the dollar's looming demise. The greenback has fallen against the euro by nearly 15 percent since the beginning of the summer. Central banks have reportedly slowed their accumulation of dollars in favor of other currencies. One sensational...

EDITORIALS

Oct 29, 2009

Coaxing an employment boost

Although Japan's economy has come through the worst phase of the current crisis, the government's October economic report shows that the unemployment rate remains high. At 5.5 percent in August, the rate was only slightly better than the all-time high of 5.7 percent registered the previous month. There...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 29, 2009

Hiroshima beckons Obama

By John Einarsen and Sudhi Ranjan Sen

KYOTO — For the past 64 years the name "Hiroshima" has conjured a nightmare vision for all humanity: the unthinkable specter of instantaneous atomic annihilation. Only by personally visiting Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the two cities that have experienced atomic bombing, can one begin to grasp the threat...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 28, 2009

It's Italy for America and Japan for Europe

By Hans-Werner Sinn

MUNICH — The American business model has collapsed. During recent years, the United States borrowed gigantic sums of money from the rest of the world. Net capital imports exceeded $800 billion in 2008 alone. The money came largely from selling mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations,...

EDITORIALS

Oct 28, 2009

Mr. Hatoyama states his politics

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama made his first keynote address to the Diet on Monday. He should be commended for summing up his "politics of fraternity" in his own words — thus dumping the practice of pasting together sentences written by bureaucrats from various ministries.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 28, 2009

Free expression under fire

By Christopher Lingle

GUATEMALA CITY — Freedom of expression is one of the most important cornerstones of a free and open society. Guarantees of freedom of expression allow citizens to learn about mistakes of the powerful and help reveal corruption at all levels.

EDITORIALS

Oct 27, 2009

Ambitious and anxious Asia

Asia aspires to lead the world. That is the chief message from the meetings of Asia-Pacific leaders that convened last weekend in Thailand. The region's rapid emergence from the global economic downturn has confirmed the belief among its leaders that it is time for an Asian community to emerge — a...

COMMENTARY

Oct 27, 2009

India has enough food for those who can pay

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

CHENNAI, India — India is still hungry 62 years after it was freed from the British colonial yoke. The Global Hunger Index for 2009 places India at a low 65th, with the far more populous China doing much better. While China has reduced the number of "hungry" people by 58 million during the past decade,...

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 27, 2009

Tokyo needs to get over the G8

By Robert Dujarric

The financial meltdown of 2008 has accelerated the decay of the Group of Eight. One of the ideas circulating is to discontinue the group and replace it with the G20. Within the G20, there would be a G4 made up of the biggest players — Japan, the United States, China and the European Union.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 27, 2009

Painful past must be put to rest for good

By Dominique Moisi

PARIS — A nation's relationship with its past is crucial to its present and its future, to its ability to "move on" with its life, or to learn from its past errors so as not to repeat them. This includes the past that isn't dead and buried — "in fact, it is not even past," as William Faulkner famously...

EDITORIALS

Oct 26, 2009

Hub idea deserves airing

Transport minister Seiji Maehara's idea of turning Tokyo's Haneda airport into a 24-hour international hub has sparked controversy. Setting his eye on the completion of Haneda's fourth runway in October 2010, he wants to make Haneda a hub in East Asia by increasing the number of international flights...

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

Maruhachi never sleeps in quest for better futons

Maruhachi never sleeps in quest for better futons

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