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EDITORIALS
May 31, 2008

Birth of a republic

Nepal has become a republic. A special assembly of legislators voted overwhelmingly this week to abolish the country's 239-year old monarchy. The Maoist-dominated Parliament now begins the difficult task of governing one of the world's poorest countries. All the country's political parties and its people...
JAPAN / TICAD IV
May 31, 2008

Africa awaits real action in TICAD wake

YOKOHAMA — The three-day Tokyo International Conference on African Development closed Friday with participants issuing a declaration committing Japan and multinational organizations to promote sustainable growth on the continent and fight poverty and climate change.
BUSINESS
May 31, 2008

Premium revenues drop at six big life insurers

Premium revenues at six of Japan's nine major life insurers dropped in the business year to March, according to earnings results released Friday.
COMMENTARY / World
May 30, 2008

Prospects for partnership in the Hindu Kush

KHYBER PASS, Pakistan — Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai never had a shared border strategy. But at Michni Post, the highest point of the Khyber Pass, which overlooks the thousands of trucks and buses buzzing through Afghanistan into Pakistan under the shadows...
COMMENTARY / Japan / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
May 28, 2008

Behind the failure of the Japanese economy

Takafusa Shioya has sent me his book published last year, "Keizai Saisei no Joken" (Conditions for Economic Recovery). Nearly three decades ago, during a period of a few years when Jimmy Carter's presidency morphed into Ronald Reagan's, he was stationed in the New York outpost of a Japanese trade office...
JAPAN
May 28, 2008

Seven years for sister's grisly slaying

The Tokyo District Court sentenced a 23-year-old man Tuesday to seven years in prison for killing his sister but acquitted him of dismembering her corpse, ruling he was legally insane when he committed that part of the crime.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
May 27, 2008

Tycoon aims to speed up politics

Business tycoon Hiroshi Okuda is said to be meeting frequently but secretly with leading figures of both the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the No. 1 opposition Democratic Party of Japan, apparently with an eye to reorganizing the political landscape after general elections expected in the not-too-distant...
JAPAN / G8 COUNTDOWN
May 26, 2008

G8 meet sidesteps midterm gas cuts

KOBE — Environment ministers from the Group of Eight countries meeting Sunday in Kobe apparently sidestepped the major issue of setting midterm greenhouse-gas reduction targets for 2020 due to a divide between developing and industrialized countries over specific targets.
Reader Mail
May 25, 2008

Better answers are out there

As a member of the diplomatic corps in Tokyo, I would like to share my thoughts on Peter Singer's article. Singer obviously capitalizes on the recent catastrophes in Myanmar and China to deliver to the distraught public a classical piece of atheist propaganda. It always strikes me how reliable anti-religious...
BUSINESS
May 24, 2008

Pension reserves urged split, diversified

Japan should split the nation's ¥150 trillion in pension reserves into smaller funds and diversify what they are invested in, private-sector members of a government advisory panel said.
COMMENTARY
May 23, 2008

It'll be Serbia's choice when the sulking stops

LONDON — The rhetoric before the Serbian parliamentary election May 11 was ugly enough, but it has gotten worse since. President Boris Tadic spun the outcome as a victory for the pro-European Union forces when only half the votes were counted, which served his purposes as he is also the leader of the...
Japan Times
JAPAN / AFRICA LIFELINE
May 23, 2008

People being hung out to dry in aid race for resources: NGO

Africa's abundance of natural resources and the robust economic growth some of its nations are experiencing in no way indicate the continent is on the road to stability and democratization, a representative for a Tokyo-based nongovernmental group said.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
May 23, 2008

Descending into the somber history of a once-glittering prize

It's a balmy spring day in Shimane Prefecture, but one step into the newly reopened Okubo Shaft of the Iwami silver mine and your body is enveloped by the darkness and the cold. In these eerie surroundings, it's not hard to imagine encountering the ghosts of the miners whose labor helped reshape Japan...
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 23, 2008

Ainu press case for official recognition

Hundreds of Ainu from all over Japan and their supporters staged a protest Thursday in Tokyo's Nagata-cho political district, demanding the Diet and the government recognize them as indigenous people.
COMMENTARY / World
May 22, 2008

Remember the black swans

The great global economic establishment is once again divided as to what is going to happen next. Half say we are lurching toward a new bout of world inflation. Half say the danger is deflation and world recession, even depression.
COMMENTARY / World
May 21, 2008

Permanent SDF overseas deployment law endangers democracy

The Japanese government wants permanent legal authority to send military forces overseas. Letting it have it would be a mistake for many reasons, but one seldom raised is the impact the move would have on the nature of Japan's democracy. A law conferring permanent authority to deploy troops would eliminate...
COMMENTARY / World
May 20, 2008

Rescuing the revolution from Yushchenko

BRUSSELS — There is no more depressing sight in politics than a leader who, desperate to cling to power, ruins his country in the process. By his recent actions, President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine now looks like he has joined the long list of rulers who have sacrificed their country's future simply...

Longform

The byzantine process for converting a foreign driver’s license into a Japanese one entails mountains of paperwork and significant stamina — unless you're a lucky license holder from a country or region where these requirements are waived.
Driving in Japan isn’t hard. Getting the license is.