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August 06, 2025

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COMMENTARY

Dec 3, 2004

China's foray south of the U.S. border

By Frank Ching

HONG KONG -- Chinese President Hu Jintao's two-week foray into Latin America in November shows the extent to which China's economic development over the last quarter century has strengthened its foreign policy outreach.

COMMENTARY

Dec 2, 2004

Risks to secular government

By Ronald Meinardus

MANILA -- In the Cold War era, the global confrontation was basically ideological. Two radically different socio-political blueprints were pitted against each other: democracy and capitalism on one side, one-party-rule and communism on the other. The opponents, then, were two superpowers and their allies...

EDITORIALS

Dec 2, 2004

First step to an 'open door'

In another milestone move aimed at expanding economic ties with fast-growing East Asian nations, Japan and the Philippines agreed this week to sign a free-trade agreement (FTA). Increased trade and investment in this region is especially welcome at a time when multilateral trade talks under the auspices...

EDITORIALS

Dec 1, 2004

Manufacturing still our lifeblood

Fifteen years after the collapse of the economic bubble, Japan's longer-term economic prospects look fairly promising. One reason for this is that Japanese banks, particularly big ones, are making good progress in their efforts to clear up their nonperforming loans. Another reason is that manufacturers...

EDITORIALS

Nov 30, 2004

Ms. Rice's nomination raises concern

Observers both here and abroad are worried that the second administration of U.S. President George W. Bush may assume a more unilateralist stance in foreign policy. Such concern stems mainly from the imminent resignation of Secretary of State Colin Powell, a firm believer in international coordination...

COMMENTARY / World

Nov 30, 2004

Chinese sub highlights underseas rivalries

By Richard Halloran

HONOLULU -- The incursion of a Chinese nuclear-powered submarine into Japanese territorial waters Nov. 10 has illuminated the mounting competition under the surface of the Pacific and Indian oceans and their adjacent seas.

COMMENTARY

Nov 30, 2004

One voice on N. Korea issue?

By Keizo Nabeshima

Multilateral efforts to stop North Korea's nuclear-weapons program are gaining momentum. Leaders of the United States, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia, meeting bilaterally on the sidelines of the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Santiago, Chile, agreed that six-nation talks...

EDITORIALS

Nov 29, 2004

Heading for higher taxes

The latest report from the government's Tax Commission has a sobering message: In the long run, taxes in Japan have nowhere to go but up. As the commission's chairman, Mr. Hiromitsu Ishi, points out, there is no way to avoid tax increases in order to put the nation's fiscal house in order.

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Nov 29, 2004

Remains of the Occupation mentality

By Hiroaki Sato

NEW YORK -- Sometimes a perception formed during an era, however unthinking, never seems to leave you. When I read, in a detailed chronology of Yukio Mishima (1925-70), that Meredith Weatherby visited Mishima at a New York hotel for an all-day discussion about his translation of Mishima's "Confessions...

COMMENTARY / World

Nov 29, 2004

A new dawn for Myanmar?

By Nyunt Shwe

Many Myanmar watchers might have been surprised when they got news of the pending release of nearly 4,000 prisoners who had been inappropriately jailed by the notorious Military Intelligence (MI) wing of former Prime Minister Gen. Khin Nyunt's regime.

COMMENTARY

Nov 29, 2004

Know what reform can't do

By Takamitsu Sawa

It looks as though Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is determined to push through postal privatization as the ultimate goal of his structural reform efforts.

EDITORIALS

Nov 28, 2004

Found in translation

I n the field of law, Japan certainly cannot yet be said to be sufficiently open vis-a-vis other countries. In order to improve this situation, a law-and-ordinance translation group set up within the government's Office for Promotion of Justice System Reform has unveiled a project to translate legislation...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

A mushroom cloud from the atomic bombing on Hiroshima taken from a U.S. military aircraft on Aug. 6, 1945. Copying the photo without permission is prohibited.

80 years on, a Japanese American hibakusha recalls the day the bomb dropped

By Elizabeth Beattie

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

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