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COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2009

Growing challenges to Asian stability

NEW DELHI — U.S. President-elect Barack Obama takes office at a time when a fundamental and qualitative reordering of power is under way in the Asia-Pacific, with tectonic shifts challenging strategic stability. The impact of such shifts on U.S. foreign policy is bound to be accentuated by America's...
EDITORIALS
Dec 28, 2008

China's miracle at middle age

It has been 30 years since China embarked on the greatest economic experiment in human history. In that time, the country has emerged from poverty and chaos to become one of the leading economic powers. It is tempting to call China's astounding growth an economic miracle, but the trajectory of the last...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 26, 2008

China and India diverging

LONDON — This year is ending with some troubling signs of future instability in Asia, as two of the most powerful states are increasingly at odds with each other.
JAPAN
Dec 26, 2008

Memorial service held for Soma

Some 800 friends, relatives, politicians and royal family members attended a memorial service Thursday in Tokyo for Yukika Soma, known as the "mother of Japan's international aid activities," who died on Nov. 8 at age 96.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 26, 2008

The top movies of 2008

In carefully ordered rankings for Japanese films and no particular order for the rest, we bring you the best films of a year that is steadily drawing its curtains closed.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 26, 2008

Top movies of 2008

In carefully ordered rankings for Japanese films and no particular order for the rest, we bring you the best films of a year that is steadily drawing its curtains closed.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 25, 2008

Rudd takes on climate change

SYDNEY — Christmas is the best time of year for Australian governments to announce bad news. So when Canberra says this country will spend big to help stop world pollution, holidaying citizens are less than stunned.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 25, 2008

Watanabe vies for change

A snap election is the most effective way to clear the "sense of stagnation" prevailing in Japan, Lower House reformist Yoshimi Watanabe of the Liberal Democratic Party told The Japan Times after voting Wednesday for an opposition resolution to this end.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Dec 23, 2008

School bridges China-Japan gap

At first glance it seems to be a typical lunch break at a local Japanese school: Boys rambunctiously chasing one another and yanking at each other's white polo shirts, little girls twirling so hard in their pleated gray skirts that they fall down with squeals of glee.
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Dec 21, 2008

Burning temples, busted black marketeers, golf boom and discriminatory bookshop

100 YEARS AGO
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 19, 2008

'The Orphanage'/'The Edge of Heaven'

It's hard to say you're a fan of horror movies these days without people looking at you like you're some drooling feeb in need of institutional help. The genre is so degraded and depraved, it's hard to say what's worse: the numbing repetition of the slasher franchises, or the sick sadism of "Saw" et...
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Dec 16, 2008

A highway system that ever exacts toll

Expressways have been a prominent feature of postwar Japan's infrastructure-building efforts.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 14, 2008

Aso the donkey plods on

Last week, when poll results showed public support for the current Cabinet at an all-time low, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party tried to move past the bad news by focusing attention on what it believes is really important. Chief Cabinent Secretary Takeo Kawamura told reporters that the LDP shouldn't...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 12, 2008

Emerging strategic ties in Asia

LONDON — Before visiting Beijing to attend the Seventh Asia-Europe Meeting summit in Beijing in October, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stopped over in Tokyo. It was his second visit to Japan since assuming office in 2004 and underlined the rapidly evolving strategic realities in Asia.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 9, 2008

Thailand turns: next stop Banana Republic

BANGKOK — "Thailand's future is up for grabs," proclaimed the eminent Thai scholar Thitinan Pongsudhirak last week just before the country's Constitutional Court ruled, in effect, that the ruling People Power Party (PPP) and its two smaller coalition partners are "illegal," and hence must disband because...
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Dec 9, 2008

Shinkansen about more than speed

Shinkansen stand as global symbols of Japanese technological innovation. Debuting just in time for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the bullet trains continue to carry people across the nation at record speed.
COMMENTARY
Dec 7, 2008

Four harsh truths about climatic change

LONDON — About two years ago, I realized that the military in various countries were starting to do climate-change scenarios in-house — scenarios that started with the scientific predictions about rising temperatures, falling crop yields and other physical effects, and examined what that would do...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 6, 2008

Tamogami essay fits 'outrageous' conspiracy theory mold

As a board member of The Academy of Outrageous Books, Shunichi Karasawa sees parallels between the controversial essay written by sacked Air Self-Defense Force chief Toshio Tamogami, an apologist for Japan's wartime aggression, and classic "outrageous" conspiracy theories.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 4, 2008

Mumbai terrorist attacks are a wakeup call

LONDON — India was a victim of terrorism long before the twin towers in New York collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001. But as the global "war on terror" continues, India has experienced increasingly lethal terrorism. The sheer scale, scope and audacity of the latest attacks in Mumbai put them in a different...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 3, 2008

Failed governance allowed attacks

MUMBAI — In most cities of South Asia, hidden beneath the grime and neglect of extreme poverty, there exists a little Somalia waiting to burst out and infect the body politic. This netherworld, patrolled and nourished by criminals who operate a vast black-market economy, has bred, in Mumbai, a community...
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Dec 2, 2008

Hailing the tail end of Bush

Regarding Barack Obama's election as U.S. president, I welcome the groundswell of hope. It's about time. The past eight years have been, well, awkward for Americans overseas.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Dec 2, 2008

Soka Gakkai keeps religious, political machine humming

What do movie star Orlando Bloom, who plays young pirate Will Turner in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series, R&B diva Tina Turner and Shunsuke Nakamura, an ace midfielder for Scottish soccer team Celtic, have in common?
COMMENTARY
Nov 24, 2008

Tamp down the old ways

Sixty years ago on Nov. 12, 1948, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMT) handed down its verdict branding Japan an aggressor nation and leading to the execution of six military leaders and one politician for instigating the war. As if to substantiate the validity of this verdict,...
JAPAN
Nov 21, 2008

Aso to be LDP 'funeral director' for delaying poll?

Taro Aso was so confident that he would call a quick election after becoming prime minister in September that he postponed moving into the official residence.
EDITORIALS
Nov 20, 2008

Out of Iraq at last?

Ater months of delays, the United States and Iraq have agreed on a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Equally important, the accord sets limits on those forces' freedom of action, giving the Baghdad government more authority over them.
Reader Mail
Nov 20, 2008

Counterpoint will pose challenge

In response to Philip Cunningham's Nov. 13 article, "Yes we can . . . what, Mr. Obama?": I can only wonder what Cunningham's point is. The article is littered with unfounded assumptions and loose suppositions lambasting U.S. President-elect Barack Obama for his incredible oratory skills and his choice...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 20, 2008

You and whose Ami?

When singer and actress Ami Suzuki appears in the TBS drama "Love Letter" this month, she'll finally realize the end of a remarkable comeback.

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years