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August 28, 2025

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EDITORIALS

Apr 27, 2009

'We don't torture'

That was then U.S. President George W. Bush's emphatic response in 2005 when asked about how his government questioned terrorist suspects in U.S. custody. The release of four previously secret memos by the U.S. Justice Department reveals — in excruciating detail — just what U.S. interrogators were...

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Apr 26, 2009

Like it or not, becoming bilingual involves being bicultural, too

By Roger Pulvers

Several weeks ago in this column, I wrote about some of the nonlinguistic aspects of raising a bilingual child. These can be social, financial and marital, involving the milieu the child grows up in, the necessity to move back and forth between countries, and even the periodic separation of husband and...

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 26, 2009

Why China will continue to back Pyongyang

By Jonathan Holslag

BRUSSELS — In another move to raise the stakes, the dictator of Pyongyang has just decided to restart his nuclear program. And who is going to stop him, now that his long-range rocket can hit parts of the American West Coast? At least in theory. During the recent test, it took him days to prepare the...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Apr 26, 2009

Recalling 'the fall of the Yasuda Auditorium' and the end of Japan's student movement

By Hiroaki Sato

At a friend's Easter Sunday dinner party, I asked, "What do you think the student movement of the '60s in the U.S. accomplished?" One guest answered, "Obama's election." Unexpected but true: in this country, the opposition to the Vietnam war went hand in hand with the movement that culminated, in federal...

EDITORIALS

Apr 26, 2009

The promise of higher education

High school students from single-mother households are giving up on higher education, according to a recent poll by Ashinaga, an NPO providing financial support to children who have lost one or both of their parents. Rather than pursue their dreams of education, over 40 percent are going to work instead....

EDITORIALS

Apr 26, 2009

90 million Japanese wired

Internet users in Japan topped 90 million at the end of 2008, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications reported earlier this month. That means three out of four Japanese are communicating, shopping, reading or hanging out on the Internet. With Japan's advanced broadband and fiber-optic connections,...

EDITORIALS

Apr 25, 2009

Time to debate, Mr. Ozawa

The Liberal Democratic Party has repeatedly asked Mr. Ichiro Ozawa, leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, to participate in a one-on-one Diet debate with Prime Minister Taro Aso. But the DPJ has refused. If this situation continues, Mr. Ozawa and the DPJ will create the impression that they have chosen...

COMMENTARY

Apr 25, 2009

Pakistan's terrorist windfall

By Brahma Chellaney

Pakistan has long proven adept at diplomatically levering its weakness into strength. Now it is using the threat of its possible implosion to rake in record-level bilateral and multilateral aid.

EDITORIALS

Apr 25, 2009

Tent villages highlight shortfalls

The establishment of a tent village in Tokyo's Hibiya Park during the New Year's holidays to help unemployed temporary workers is a sobering reflection of these hard times. In the tent village, nonprofit organization and labor union activists gave advice on a variety of matters ranging from finding employment...

EDITORIALS

Apr 24, 2009

Tokyo by-law threatens freedoms

Street performances are fun for many people and give character to streets and communities such as Tokyo's Shibuya, Harajuku, Akihabara and Kichijoji areas. But now such activities may be restricted or banned due to a revision of the Tokyo metropolitan by-law for "the building of safe and secure communities,"...

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 24, 2009

New revolt of the masses

By Dominique Moisi

PARIS — Is the current economic crisis uniting the democratic world in anger as much as in fear? In France, with many factories closing, a wave of executive hostage-taking — "boss-napping," as this newfangled crime is called — is agitating board rooms and police. In the United States, big bonuses...

EDITORIALS

Apr 23, 2009

Resignation not enough

Mr. Noboru Okubo and his eldest son have resigned respectively as chief director and vice director of the Kyoto-based Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation over irregularities related to its operations, including the accumulation of unusually large profits for a public-interest corporation and opaque...

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

Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after

Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after

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