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February 25, 2025
 

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COMMENTARY / World
Jul 12, 2014
Is China really set on another Olympics?
By Adam Minter
One would have expected some civic joy at Monday's news that Beijing is listed as one of three candidate finalists to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. Curiously, though, that news has been hard to find in China.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 11, 2014
If only the U.S. had stayed out of WWI
Did U.S. intervention in the latter stage of World War I end up in just prolonging the European slaughter? David A. Stockman, first-term budget director for President Ronald Reagan, says it did as well as trigger a cascade of offenses later on in the 20th century.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 11, 2014
Cost of 'making' democracy
By William Pfaff
For most of the American electorate, the U.S. perseveres as the messenger of democracy to a world that usually hasn't earned it and probably doesn't deserve it. But consider what this proud effort in the Mideast, Afghanistan, Ukraine and elsewhere has done to U.S. civil liberties and to U.S. democracy.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 11, 2014
The silver fox of dictatorship and democracy
By Nina L. Khrushcheva
The reality of the times was that Eduard Shevardnadze was both a democrat and a despot. His death brings closer to the end the Gorbachev generation of reform communists who presented a stark contrast to the dour Brezhnev-era hard-liners, spurring (mostly inadvertently) the collapse of the Soviet empire and the long transition to democracy.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 11, 2014
Germany's triumph in Brazil was no surprise
By Leonid Bershidsky
Everything about the 7-1 German victory over Brazil in a World Cup semifinal was logical and even overdue. The entire German soccer system has been working toward this moment since 2001.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 11, 2014
Is there a right to secede?
By Peter Singer
If a majority of the voters in a distinct region of a country favor independence, does that mean that they have a right to secede? Paradoxically the EU has made it more feasible for states like Scotland and Catalonia to consider independence.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 11, 2014
Megacities offer toxic mix of modern apocalypse
By Pankaj Mishra
Exhibits at the 14th Venice Biennale of Architecture demonstrate that the urgent challenge for many societies is to prevent the megacity from becoming a byword for multifaceted apoclypse, mashinging together poverty, corruption, violence and fundamentalism.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 10, 2014
Cost of passive power struggles
By Yoichi Funabashi
The chairman of the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation recalls how the failure of the navy minister to express a truthful personal opinion within a group closed the window on Japanese doves' hopes of averting war months before the Pearl Harbor attack.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 10, 2014
Abe's defense policy from a historical perspective
By Masamichi Hanabusa
Since Japan, unlike China, neither possesses nor desires nuclear weapons, Japan's use of military power in East Asia has its limits. Therefore, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's decision to let Japan exercise the right of 'collective self-defense' is limited in scope and should not alarm countries that have no intention of attacking Japan or the U.S.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 8, 2014
Japan's innovation challenge
By Shinji Fukukawa
The Abe administration's capacity for deciding how to raise the birthrate, improve child-care facilities, realize an appropriae work-life balance and promote other 'innovations' that enable Japan to solve its many problems is now being tested.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 8, 2014
Thomas Piketty with Chinese characteristics
By Xiao Geng and Andrew Sheng
As property prices have risen faster than wages and profits in manufacturing, China's top 1 percent income earners are accumulating wealth significantly faster than their counterparts in the rest of the world — and far faster than the average Chinese.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 8, 2014
Xi's fumbles give Obama's pivot a second chance
By William Pesek
Years from now, when the history of Barack Obama's much-maligned 'pivot to Asia' is written, he may owe a debt of gratitude to Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose overbearing ways in the region are giving Obama a second wind.
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.
SoftBank among eFishery investors facing near wipeout
In all, global investors plowed around $315 million into eFishery’s preferred shares over five funding rounds.
Ukraine's underground schools helping children feel safe
Children do exercises in a hall during a break between classes in an underground school in Zaporizhzhia on Jan. 27.
U.S. Marines start to leave Japan, decades behind schedule
U.S. Marines during training in Okinawa last month.
Japan may ease privacy rules to aid AI development
Under the law, information such as race, social status, medical history and any criminal record is designated as sensitive personal information, and obtaining such information requires prior consent from the individuals concerned.
Japan looks to save seafood and seaweed farming from warming oceans
Asian seabass are bred at the Songkhla Coastal Aquaculture Technology and Innovation Research and Development Center in southern Thailand.
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.
As Ukraine rift emerges, Kyiv's envoy says Japan must take on bigger global role
Ukrainian Ambassador to Japan Sergiy Korsunsky speaks during an interview at the Ukrainian Embassy in Tokyo on Monday.
Attempting the classics: Deciphering impermanence in ‘Hojoki’
The poet and essayist Kamo no Chomei wrote “Hojoki” in 1212 after bearing witness to a series of natural and man-made disasters. His experiences caused him to withdraw into a hermetic lifestyle.
Japan release of Shiori Ito's documentary in limbo
Shiori Ito, who won a civil suit over a rape case against a TV reporter, in 2018. Her former lawyers claim her documentary includes footage used without the consent of sources.

Podcast

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

Longform

The building of new high-rise residential buildings has some alarmed that they could empty and fall into disrepair as Japan's population shrinks.
The high cost of letting Japan's condos crumble
By Tomoko Otake

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