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March 17, 2025
 

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COMMENTARY / World
Nov 28, 2008
Defense of an artist who had lived as a slave
By Norman Manea
NEW YORK — Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of the collapse of communism in Europe. Liberated from the complexity of knowing too much about the cruel past, the young people of Eastern Europe's postcommunist generation seem uninterested in what their parents and grandparents endured.
COMMENTARY
Nov 28, 2008
Spoiling for a Tibetan fight
By Gwynne Dyer
LONDON — The Dalai Lama spoke in his customary platitudes, and the Chinese regime responded with its habitual bluster, but a corner was turned in the China-Tibet dispute last week. From now on, it's likely to get worse.
COMMENTARY
Nov 27, 2008
Time to get tough with Somali pirates
By Gwynne Dyer
On one side are the eight navies, the world's largest shipping companies, the rich Gulf states that need to get their oil to market, and the great powers, whose commerce depends heavily on the shipping lanes around the Horn of Africa. On the other side are a few thousand Somali pirates in small boats...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 27, 2008
Letting the Big Three fail risks a meltdown
By Thomas I. Palley
WASHINGTON — The financial crisis that began in 2007 has been persistently marked by muddled thinking and haphazard policymaking. Now, the U.S. Treasury is headed for a mistake of historic and catastrophic proportions by refusing to bail out America's Big Three automakers.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 26, 2008
Too much for the Earth to bear
By Kevin Rafferty
HONG KONG — The global financial crisis that has sent economies teetering from recession toward slump is preoccupying politicians and families worldwide, who see their livelihoods being snatched away by the consequences of the inventive greed of financial whiz kids.
COMMENTARY
Nov 26, 2008
Pirates feel the sting of India's naval muscle
By Ramesh Thakur
WATERLOO, Ontario — The rising might of India and the growing menace of piracy collided recently in the Gulf of Aden, a 2.59-million-square-km stretch of waterway between Somalia and Yemen. This came after India's demonstration of prowess in space with the successful launch of a lunar probe. As a symbol...
COMMENTARY
Nov 26, 2008
Common sense versus PC
By Hugh Cortazzi
Presumably the recent remarks of former infrastructure minister Nariaki Nakayama about Japan being ethnically homogeneous were correctly reported. If so his remarks were tactless, in view of Japan's Ainu population, but also showed an ignorance of history. The Japanese are generally considered to be...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 25, 2008
Room for Asian influence in G20 structure
By Michael Richardson
SINGAPORE — Finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of 20 advanced and emerging economies have been meeting regularly for nearly a decade. But the decision to convene a summit of the G20 heads of government in Washington the weekend of Nov. 15 marked an important turning point in...
COMMENTARY
Nov 25, 2008
West Coast appreciates destiny with Asia
By Tom Plate
LOS ANGELES — Serious intellectual narrowing can happen to even the brightest folk once nested down on the U.S. East Coast. They become preoccupied (almost neurotically, almost provincially) with the problems of the past — especially with the Middle East and Europe — and lose sight of the new problems...
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Nov 25, 2008
U.S.-China ties weaken alliances
As the United States works harder than ever to strengthen relations with China, there are signs its alliances with Japan and Taiwan are weakening. A conspicuous sign of change in Japan-U.S. ties came early Oct. 12 when President George W. Bush telephoned Prime Minister Taro Aso to inform the latter of...
COMMENTARY
Nov 24, 2008
Tamp down the old ways
By Kiroku Hanai
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,...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Nov 24, 2008
Burst of U.S. bubble arouses old specters
By Hiroaki Sato
So the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has spoken: The "usual tools of economic policy — above all, the Federal Reserve's ability to pump up the economy by cutting interest rates — have lost all traction" ("Depression Economics Return," Nov. 14, The New York Times).
U.S. designated South Korea a 'sensitive' country amid talk of nuclear weapons
Then-U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean leader Yoon Suk Yeol attend an Indo-Pacific Economic Framework event at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco in November 2023.
Canada has a new prime minister with a very hard first assignment
Mark Carney, Canada's incoming prime minister (center), during a swearing-in ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Friday. Carney has been sworn in as Canada's 24th prime minister, bringing the former central banker to power in the middle of an explosive trade war with the U.S.
Unification Church faces dissolution in Japan
The logo of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, better known as the Unification Church, is seen at the entrance of its Japan branch headquarters in Tokyo in October 2023.
Tigers shut out the Cubs as Seiya Suzuki receives warm welcome in Tokyo
Tigers players walk off the field while carrying Cubs caps during a rare exhibition game between NPB and MLB clubs.
As it turns 70, LDP struggles to find its fountain of youth
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba (second from left) cheers along with other members of the Liberal Democratic Party during the party's annual convention in Tokyo on March 9.
Japan’s youth climate activists still searching for a breakthrough
While climate demonstrations around the world often draw thousands of participants, in Japan such demonstrations rarely break the 100-person barrier.
Bank of Japan unlikely to raise rates this week as trade war intensifies
Bank of Japan headquarters building in February. In January, the BOJ voted to raise its short-term policy rate to 0.5% from 0.25%, taking it to the highest level since the 2008 financial crisis.
As it turns 70, LDP struggles to find its fountain of youth
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba (second from left) cheers along with other members of the Liberal Democratic Party during the party's annual convention in Tokyo on March 9.
As pollen season peaks, Japan's allergy struggle emerges from hibernation
Urbanization is amplifying pollen-related allergies as grasslands and soft soil give way to concrete and asphalt.
Japan to get tough on businesses not taking heatstroke countermeasures
A construction site in Tokyo in July 2018. Businesses failing to take measures to prevent severe heatstroke among employees will be subjected to criminal punishment from June.

Podcast

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

Longform

Passengers that were on a morning train attacked by members of the Aum Shinrikyo group wait for medical assistance outside Kasumigaseki Station on March 20,1995.
The day a religious cult brought terror to Tokyo
By Alex K.T. Martin

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