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COMMENTARY / World

Apr 1, 2009

Hubris paved way to crisis

By Daniel Cloud

PRINCETON, New Jersey — To understand how we got ourselves into our current economic mess, complicated explanations about derivatives, regulatory failure, and so on are beside the point. The best answer is both ancient and simple: hubris.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 31, 2009

Water, water everywhere but . . .

By Shobha Shukla

ISTANBUL, CITIZEN NEWS SERVICE — Water constitutes about three-fourths of Earth's surface, but only less than 1 percent of it can be used by its inhabitants. Most of it consists of saltwater oceans (about 97 percent), and 2 percent of that is contained in glaciers. With every country seeking to satisfy...

COMMENTARY

Mar 30, 2009

Here we go again: coaxing the North to shoot straight

By Ralph Cossa

HONOLULU — North Korean "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il is a hard person to like; he is even a harder person to ignore. At a time when the rest of the world would prefer to focus its attention elsewhere, the North Korean leader is trying his best to shine the spotlight on the one area of the world where...

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT

Mar 29, 2009

Japan shows how a good's no good unless it's a character good

By Roger Pulvers

"Novels you can eat" was the title of an article in the Asahi Shimbun on March 16. It drew on the initiative displayed by a confectionery-maker in Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture, to commemorate this year's 100th anniversary of the birth of bohemian author Osamu Dazai. That initiative involves a box of 18...

COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK

Mar 29, 2009

Hold the SOS call on the Japanese language

By Hiroaki Sato

Will the Japanese language die, crushed by the onslaught of English? This question has set off some heated talk in Japan recently because of a book suggesting that it may. First, a friend of mine in Tokyo, a member of a small reading club, told me about it. Then another friend wrote to say the book became...

COMMENTARY

Mar 27, 2009

China shelves dispute over right of passage

By Frank Ching

HONG KONG — Ahead of the first meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, scheduled to take place in London next week, China has backed down, temporarily at least, in its dispute with the United States over whether U.S. Navy ships require Chinese permission before...

COMMENTARY

Mar 27, 2009

Perks of the warring states

By Ramesh Thakur

WATERLOO, Ontario — Since the end of World War II, America, Britain and Israel have been among the countries most heavily involved in war and armed conflict. Don't expect to see any of their political or military leaders in an international criminal dock anytime soon.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 26, 2009

Piracy and the Constitution

By Craig Martin

Once again the issue of Japanese contributions to international security efforts is the subject of tortured debate. And once again the proposed government policy, and aspects of the debate itself, reveals fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between Article 9 of the Constitution and the relevant...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 26, 2009

Iran's promising presidential contender

By Alireza Nader

WASHINGTON — Iran's presidential race just got more interesting, with former Prime Minister Mir Hussein Mousavi throwing his hat in the ring and former President Mohammad Khatami withdrawing his. This development poses the most significant challenge yet to current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad —...

COMMENTARY

Mar 25, 2009

Wrestling with job losses as the recession deepens

By Hugh Cortazzi

In Britain the number of unemployed has reached over 2 million (6.5 percent) and there are fears that the number will rise to over 3 million before the recession ends. In America the rate of unemployment is reported to have risen to 8.1 percent. In European countries that have adopted the euro as their...

COMMENTARY

Mar 24, 2009

Barring the people needed

By Gregory Clark

The Calderon affair — the expulsion of a Filipino couple who entered Japan illegally but whose Japanese-fluent daughter was born and raised in Japan — is seen as an indictment of Japan's confused immigration policies. And rightly.

COMMENTARY

Mar 23, 2009

Costly transfer to Guam

By Kiroku Hanai

PARIS — It was welcome news for the struggling government of Prime Minister Taro Aso that the Obama administration has given Japan a high priority in its foreign policy agenda. In mid-February, Hillary Rodham Clinton chose Japan as the first country to visit as U.S. secretary of state, and later that...

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Wealthier women in the prewar era had been the targets of various media-related health campaigns that mistakenly encouraged them to avoid everything from riding bicycles to reading novels when their monthly cycles came around.

Menstruation in Japan: Breaking the silence, slowly

By Tomoko Otake

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

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