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COMMENTARY / World
Jun 16, 2011

Are Saudi women next?

The unexpected visibility and assertiveness of women in the revolutions unfolding across the Arab world — in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and elsewhere — has helped propel what has become variously known as the "Arab awakening" or "Arab Spring." Major changes have occurred in the...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 12, 2011

Enjoy art with alpine views

Back in the 1960s, a New York postal worker named Herbert Vogel and his librarian wife, Dorothy, began buying paintings. Using Herb's modest salary, and living off Dorothy's, they picked out affordable pieces that took their fancy — most of them by artists unknown at the time. By the early '90s, their...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 8, 2011

Dial Mladic for mass murder

The old saying about the importance of justice appearing to be done as well as being done is perhaps even more relevant to international than national politics.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jun 7, 2011

Refugees International Japan President Jane Best

Jane Best is the president of Refugees International Japan, an independent, nonprofit organization based in Tokyo. Since its foundation 32 years ago, RIJ's dedicated volunteers and staff have been raising funds in Japan and working on projects to help support refugees around the world. Before joining...
Reader Mail
Jun 5, 2011

IMF chief who makes a difference

Regarding Kevin Rafferty's May 26 article, "Japan: the silent IMF partner": It really doesn't matter whether the new managing director of the International Monetary Fund is a French woman or a Bushman, so long as either shares the ideology of the IMF-World Bank — that only unbridled capitalism can...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 4, 2011

Mideast peace process and the Arab Spring

U.S. President Barack Obama's speech on the ongoing popular uprisings in the Middle East, followed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent visit to Washington, was intended to kick off a renewed effort to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Things are not turning out as planned....
JAPAN
Jun 4, 2011

Aid group calls for more vaccines

The head of a Geneva-based aid group on funding vaccinations in developing countries urged Japan on Friday to make larger financial contributions to saving children's lives in disease-stricken parts of the world.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 2, 2011

Japan's costly lesson in risk management

The basic principle of financial risk management is sharing. The more broadly diversified our financial portfolios, the more people there are who share in the inevitable risks — and the less an individual is affected by any given risk. The theoretical ideal occurs when financial contracts spread the...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 28, 2011

CARE official helps Tohoku after a career of hot spots

Futaba Kaiharazuka, an assistant program director with the aid organization CARE International Japan, remembers clearly the first time she visited a refugee camp in Pakistan.
COMMENTARY
May 26, 2011

Asia's shaky water and energy balancing act

Much of central China along the Yangtze River is in the grip of its worst energy crisis in years. The electricity cuts for industry and households have been exacerbated by a five-month drought that has dried up rivers, reducing hydroelectric generating capacity and leaving many people and large swaths...
COMMENTARY / World
May 24, 2011

Disorganized dreams of Egyptian democrats

The Internet is an extraordinarily powerful tool. It has changed how we do business, how we do politics, and even how we change our leaders — at least some of the time. But the ease with which we now communicate, the efficiencies we take for granted, can give us a false sense of how easy it is to follow...
COMMENTARY / World
May 23, 2011

For more effective multilateral surveillance

As the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development celebrates its 50th anniversary, one of its biggest challenges is to adapt its frameworks for surveillance to the new reality of the global economy.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 19, 2011

Yoshida returns to dance with the BRB as it tours her homeland

Miyako Yoshida, who retired from The Royal Ballet last year after a 25-year career at the top of the ballet world, is now bringing the grace that she has become world-famous for home to her native Japan — as guest principal of the Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB), which tours the country for the first...
MORE SPORTS / ICE TIME
May 18, 2011

Morozov once turned down chance to coach Mao

It's a story that few know, but is fascinating nonetheless, one that may have changed the course of recent skating history.
BUSINESS
May 14, 2011

Crisis to heat up winter LNG prices

Japan, which buys about a third of the world's liquefied natural gas, is poised to import record amounts in the coming year, heralding a surge in prices as demand peaks next winter.
COMMENTARY / World
May 11, 2011

What must be done to realize Asia's century

An Asia producing over half of global GDP? Three billion Asians considered part of the "rich world" by 2050? A dream ... or a plausible reality?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
May 10, 2011

Japan Tourism Agency Commissioner Hiroshi Mizohata

Hiroshi Mizohata, 50, is the Commissioner of the Japan Tourism Agency. A native of Kyoto and a graduate of the University of Tokyo, Mizohata entered the ranks of the prestigious kanryō, the career bureaucrats who control Japan's top-tier government offices. He worked in various ministries in Tokyo and...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Apr 26, 2011

Disaster darkens fisheries' decline

The wreckage of a 379-ton tuna boat blocks the road to the deserted fish market in Kesennuma, once Japan's largest port for bonito and swordfish. Even after the debris from last month's tsunami have been cleared away, the industry may never recover.
EDITORIALS
Apr 15, 2011

No way to run a government

A shutdown of the United States government has been averted. At the last minute,negotiators from the Republican-controlled House of Representatives struck a deal with their Democratic Party counterparts from the Senate. The final compromise cuts $38.5 billion from the 2010 budget. While that sounds like...
Japan Times
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Apr 8, 2011

The U.S. role in advancing amateur sumo

In the second of two interviews with globally respected officials involved in the international sumo game, Sumo Scribblings recently threw a few questions over the Pacific to Andrew Freund, the face of the United States Sumo Federation. In many ways far bigger in the sport than his slim physique would...
COMMENTARY
Mar 24, 2011

Japan's moment of crisis

LONDON — Harrowing pictures of the sufferings of the Japanese people and the devastation of towns and villages along the northeast coast of Honshu as a result of the record-breaking earthquake and the unprecedented tsunami March 11 have dominated the British media for nearly two weeks.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 23, 2011

Preserving the energy mix

HONOLULU, EAST-WEST WIRE — As the triple disasters of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear emergency continue to wreak havoc on Japan, our condolences and admiration go out to the Japanese people for the courage and determination with which they are dealing with the aftereffects of an unprecedented...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 17, 2011

Longtime Arab myths versus today's realities

WASHINGTON — With Hosni Mubarak's ouster in Egypt — widely considered to have one of the region's most stable regimes until only recently — and Col. Moammar Gadhafi clinging to power in Libya, there is no clear end in sight to the turmoil sweeping across the Arab world. Protests have already toppled...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 16, 2011

Finding a way to make industrial policy work

GENEVA — Industrial policy (IP) is back — or rather, back in fashion. Of course, it never really went away, even in countries formally adhering to free-market principles. But the postcrisis world — in which government intervention in the economy has gained greater legitimacy — will see more of...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 13, 2011

Must young Japanese live the nightmare of old people's dreams?

Not long ago, I came to loathe a particular word. The word — which I used to believe in and cherish — is now, perhaps, the most misused of all those in the Japanese language. It is yume (dream).
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / BY THE GLASS
Mar 11, 2011

Savor the taste of bottled sunshine

Last year's World Cup gave Japan the opportunity to discover more about South Africa than just vuvuzelas: In 2010, packaged wine exports from South Africa to Japan grew by an impressive 11 percent. While the noise of the hornlike instrument is happily fading away (hopefully never to be heard again),...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 10, 2011

Al-Qaida watches as Arab dramas unfold

PRINCETON, N.J. — The Arab world has entered the most dramatic period in its modern history. Oppressive regimes are being swept away, as Arab people finally take their fate into their own hands.

Longform

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