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August 14, 2025

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EDITORIALS

Apr 13, 2005

Troubling events in China

The recent wave of anti-Japanese demonstrations in China raises questions about Beijing's will to stabilize the situation. At the beginning of this month, demonstrators went on a rampage in Sichuan and Shenzhen in southern China, smashing windows of a Japanese supermarket and committing other acts of...

COMMENTARY

Apr 12, 2005

Lee should avoid Yasukuni

By Robyn Lim

With tensions rising again across the Taiwan Strait, some in Japan seem to think that it might be timely for former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui to visit controversial Yasukuni Shrine, the memorial in Tokyo to Japan's war dead.

EDITORIALS

Apr 12, 2005

Progress in Baghdad

After what seemed like interminable delay, Iraqi politicians have agreed on the country's top leaders. The posts have been filled by representatives from all of Iraq's main religious and ethnic groups, creating as inclusive a national leadership as possible. The agreement hints that deals have also been...

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 11, 2005

Invest to bolster peace in southern Sudan

By Ramiro Lopes Da Silva

KHARTOUM -- Cereal trader Said Abubaker has a simple explanation for the fast-rising price of the local staple sorghum in the town market at Warawar in southern Sudan: "Peace has been a stranger in our land for so long that now that it has come, nature does not know how to welcome it."

COMMENTARY

Apr 11, 2005

The danger of keeping Japan in its place

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES -- Reform of the United Nations -- that terribly tarnished crown jewel of post-World War II global order -- is, as everyone agrees, urgently needed. For all its imperfections, it is the best world political organization we have.

EDITORIALS

Apr 11, 2005

Intellectual property disputes

Japan's efforts to bolster the legal system for protecting intellectual property (IP) rights reached a major milestone with the recent establishment of the Intellectual Property High Court. The new court, which is housed in the same building as the Tokyo High Court, will handle a broad range of disputes...

COMMENTARY

Apr 11, 2005

EU Constitution in trouble

By David Howell

LONDON -- It is possible, even probable, that the French people will reject the European Union's proposed new constitution in their referendum on May 31.

EDITORIALS

Apr 10, 2005

Thinking outside the box

I t's everyone's nightmare. While spring was just starting to tempt people outside in New York City on April 1, a Chinese-food deliveryman was trapped inside -- stuck in the elevator of a high-rise apartment building from which he was not rescued for more than three days. It must have seemed to him as...

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 10, 2005

Schiavo case deepens America's divide

By Fred Balitzer

ONTARIO, Calif. -- Seldom can I recall any issue in America producing as much emotion and division as the case of Terri Schiavo. The Iraq war has not come close to reaching this level of emotional expression. After being denied food and water for 13 days, her death on March 31, at 41 years of age, brings...

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 10, 2005

Intervention based on rules

By Ramesh Thakur

According to the U.N. High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, "The maintenance of world peace and security depends importantly on there be-- ing a common global understanding, and acceptance, of when the application of force is both legal and legitimate."

EDITORIALS

Apr 10, 2005

A shark goes free

A n ocean away from here in Monterey Bay, Calif., aquarium officials last week freed a great white shark they had held captive for more than six months, a record for the much-mythologized species. While the creature's release was hailed by animal rights activists, the fact that she had been held at all...

COMMENTARY

Apr 9, 2005

School kitchens need a nanny

By Sarah Benton

LONDON -- Turkey twizzlers once divided the nation; now they appear to have united it in a surge of national purpose for reform. This is thanks to a new political hero, chef Jamie Oliver, who, from one of the most despised backgrounds in Britain -- white working-class boy from Essex -- has shown imagination...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Koichi Tagawa’s diary entry from Aug. 9, 1945, describes the day of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

The horrors of Nagasaki, in first person

By Naoko Abe

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