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LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Aug 8, 2007

Cell phones may turn into boomboxes

Batteries just don't generate the respect they deserve. Imagine how much poorer your lifestyle would be if all of the miniature power cells you use just up and disappeared. Panasonic, as one of the many companies whose profit margins very much rest on these humble gadgets, knows their value and often...
JAPAN / Q&A
Aug 7, 2007

DPJ's prospects with upper hand in Upper House

The July 29 House of Councilors election brought a landslide victory to the Democratic Party of Japan, which together with the other opposition forces gained a majority in the chamber. In addition, the DPJ won the largest number of seats on a single-party basis and thus will grab the Upper House presidency....
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 5, 2007

Conversion in France's Foreign Ministry

PRAGUE — French President Nicolas Sarkozy's appointment of Bernard Kouchner as France's foreign minister was a brilliant political stroke. Having beaten his Socialist rival, Segolene Royal, Sarkozy decided to compound the Socialists' crisis by appointing to his government several political figures...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 5, 2007

Tojo and Bush: Trumpeting delusion on their way to defeat

Writing in the New York Times on July 17, the newspaper's well-known columnist David Brooks reported on a White House press conference he attended on July 13. "[Pres.] Bush was assertive and good-humored," Brooks noted.
COMMENTARY
Aug 3, 2007

Wanted: creative leadership

HONOLULU — As expected, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) were defeated in Sunday's Upper House election. And, despite concerted attempts to lower expectations, the results still embarrassed the ruling party.
EDITORIALS
Aug 1, 2007

Revise the personal information law

The Personal Information Protection Law, which went into effect in April 2005, in principle bars organizations that possess or handle personal information from providing it to third parties without the consent of the people concerned. Good intentions are behind the law.
BUSINESS
Jul 31, 2007

Market watchers still upbeat after election

Because it was anticipated and already factored in by market players, the defeat suffered by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party in Sunday's election will have little impact on stocks, experts say.
JAPAN
Jul 26, 2007

Do faults run deeper than Tepco safety vows?

technical matters as well as the aspect of management." Right after the temblor hit, water started leaking from the spent fuel pool at the No. 6 reactor and a transformer fire started at the No. 3 reactor that burned for about two hours. Tepco eventually reported 63 problems at the complex, including...
JAPAN / UPPER HOUSE SHOWDOWN
Jul 26, 2007

Once unthinkable, farmers may vote DPJ

KUMAMOTO — The city of Yamaga, at the northern edge of Kumamoto Prefecture, is a landscape marked with rice paddies. The farmers who tend them are a socially conservative lot — a loyal source of support for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
Reader Mail
Jul 25, 2007

More garbage seen off the trail

An article last month regarding trash on the trail to Mount Fuji quoted a 20-year-old volunteer university student as saying, "I'd hate for people to see the trash around here and think it means Japan is a culture of garbage."
JAPAN / UPPER HOUSE SHOWDOWN
Jul 25, 2007

Shimane voters: Has Tokyo helped us?

National polls may show that voter outrage over the pension records fiasco is the primary issue in Sunday's Upper House election.
COMMENTARY
Jul 23, 2007

U.S. owes A-bomb apology

Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma recently got himself into trouble by saying the 1945 U.S. atomic bombings of Japan toward the end of World War II "couldn't be helped." He made the gaffe ahead of the Aug. 6 anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Kyuma was forced to resign, despite Prime Minister...
JAPAN
Jul 19, 2007

Chinese hurt by abandoned arms lose redress on appeal

The Tokyo High Court on Wednesday reversed a lower court ruling and rejected a damages lawsuit filed by 13 Chinese against the government for injuries and death caused by weapons abandoned by the Japanese military in China at the end of the war.
JAPAN
Jul 18, 2007

Comics defying taboos, ditching slapstick for political satire

listens to ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Yasuhide Nakayama during a taping of Ota's weekly "news" show at NTV in Tokyo in May. AP PHOTO

Longform

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