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March 04, 2025
 

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COMMENTARY / World
May 31, 2012
Setting the record straight on marriage
By Stephanie Coontz
Late spring is upon us, and with it comes wedding season, the time of year that inspires a peculiar mix of sentimental stories about chance meetings leading to love alongside gloomy commentaries about the chances of marital happiness. Both the sentiment and the gloom are based on misguided ideas about...
COMMENTARY
May 30, 2012
How the Afghan war ends
By Gwynne Dyer
The recent NATO summit in Chicago was mostly about how to get NATO troops out of Afghanistan without causing too much embarrassment to the Western governments that sent them, and a little bit about how to ensure that the Taliban don't take over again once Western troops leave.
COMMENTARY / World
May 30, 2012
Citizens are main stakeholders in rebuilding global governance
By Yasushi Kudo
The Council on Foreign Relations, a leading U.S. foreign policy institute and publisher of Foreign Affairs magazine, this spring launched a network of the world's influential policy institutes. The initiative aims at creating a forum for serious discussion among policy researchers to address pressing...
COMMENTARY
May 30, 2012
It's time U.S. dropped the college-for-all crusade
By Robert Samuelson
The college-for-all crusade has outlived its usefulness. Time to ditch it. Like the crusade to make all Americans homeowners, it's now doing more harm than good. It looms as the largest mistake in educational policy since World War II, even though higher education's expansion also ranks as one of America's...
COMMENTARY / World
May 30, 2012
Who will triumph in Egypt?
By Omar Ashour
Everything about Egypt's revolution has been unexpected, and the first-round results in the country's first-ever competitive presidential election are no different.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
May 28, 2012
Overruling doubt to indict: underbelly of Japan's reform
The April 26 acquittal in Tokyo District Court of former Democratic Party of Japan chief Ichiro Ozawa signified total "defeat" for public prosecutors in view of the strong possibility, as a journalist on judicial matters said, that the prosecutors had maneuvered a "prosecution inquest committee," an...
COMMENTARY
May 28, 2012
China, too, faces challenge of an aging society
By Cesar Chelala
Parallel to its economic development, China is facing the challenge of a rapidly aging population. This is happening at a time when urbanization and industrialization is quickly increasing in the country. It is a trend that has weakened traditional family support networks, particularly for the elderly....
COMMENTARY / World
May 28, 2012
Why do economies stop growing?
By Michael Spence
Over the years, advanced and developing countries have experimented, sometimes deliberately and frequently inadvertently, with a variety of approaches to growth. Unfortunately, many of these strategies have turned out to have built-in limitations or decelerators — what one might call elements of unsustainability....
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
May 28, 2012
Unmachinable, unreformable, but necessary
By Hiroaki Sato
One recent topic for The Wall Street Journal's front-page space set aside for stories other than the daily shenanigans of business, politics and wars was the community in Florida created for retired letter carriers. ("In Florida, These Retirees Deliver a First-Class Protest," March 27.)
COMMENTARY
May 28, 2012
The politics of victimhood
By Ramesh Thakur
When a group of gay activists engaged in an angry confrontation with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, who was having dinner with a major columnist in a Melbourne restaurant, the journalist noted how those demanding tolerance of diversity had shown an ugly face of extreme intolerance uncharacteristic of...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 27, 2012
Nuclear power profiteers seem keen to risk getting blood on their hands
By Roger Pulvers
Areport this year by the Independent Investigation Committee on the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, a group set up in September 2011 by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation, condemned what it called Japan's "absolute safety myth." The Japanese government, in collusion with the media and the regional electric-power...
COMMENTARY / World
May 24, 2012
Sierra Leone: finding forgiveness in unlikely places
By Samuel Konkofa Koroma
Last month a court in The Hague found former Liberian president Charles Taylor guilty of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in fueling a 10-year, bloody conflict in Sierra Leone. The verdict capped a trial that itself had dragged on for years and had been punctuated by moments...
Seven & I and Nissan deal fallout leaves Japan companies vulnerable
The rapid collapse of the plan to take Seven & I private reflects how personal egos and domestic competitiveness ultimately outweighed the nationalistic desire to fend off Canada’s Alimentation Couche-Tard, whose pursuit of the Japanese retailer emerged last August.
China’s military puts Pacific on notice as U.S. priorities shift
A photo released by the Australia Defense Force showed an Australian Navy ship in the foreground and two Chinese navy ships in the Tasman Sea in February.
Not even Japan is safe from counterfeit luxury goods
While Japan's luxury goods market remains strong, its seconhand resale market is proving just as much a draw for tourists searching for great bargains — as long as they can manage to get their hands on the real deal.
Japan struggles to fend off a world without enough matcha
Once a boon to tea farmers' bottom lines, the global matcha craze is now pushing producers and distributors to their limits with few options to adequately meet demand.
7-Eleven owner to appoint first foreign CEO, report says
Seven & I Holdings CEO Ryuichi Isaka is stepping down from his position, the Nikkei newspaper has reported.
Japanese stocks stalled at 1989 levels as investors weigh tariffs and rates
An electronic sign displays the benchmark Nikkei stock average on a street in Tokyo. The stock average has been range-bound between about 38,000 and 40,000 since hitting a new all-time high in July last year.
Redevelopment and resistance in historic Nishiogikubo
Tsuyoshi Mizukoshi, owner of a pub in Nishiogi’s commercial area, is a community organizer who is rallying local residents against the road development plan.
Why the latest Iwate wildfire is so difficult to extinguish
Firefighters work to extinguish the forest fire in the city of Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture, in this screenshot of a video footage from the Fire and Disaster Management Agency on Friday.
Japan’s climate heroes show potential and limits of local initiatives
Hidetaka Ishii, an official at the Chiba Municipal Government, says close coordination with private-sector operators is key for regional decarbonization efforts.
Aboard Japan’s most luxurious train, the journey is the destination
The luxury Seven Stars in Kyushu train trades the hyper-efficiency of typical rail travel in Japan for a slower, more decadent version.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Pedestrians commute through Shibuya Station in central Tokyo, an area that is almost never devoid of people.
As the rest of Japan shrinks, Tokyo grows
By Alex K.T. Martin

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