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January 19, 2025

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EDITORIALS

Dec 15, 2002

A very precise slice of pi

Sure, admitted mathematicians everywhere last week, what Tokyo University professor Yasumasa Kanada had just done would not be of much use in the real world, but they were awestruck, just the same. On Dec. 6, Mr. Kanada and his team at Todai's Information Technology Center announced that they had capped...

EDITORIALS

Dec 14, 2002

Words must be matched with deeds

Japanese diplomacy in the post-Cold War era has been mostly passive, except in a few groundbreaking areas such as participation in U.N. peacekeeping operations. One reason for this, according to a report from a foreign policy advisory group, is that the domestic political situation has remained unstable...

EDITORIALS

Dec 13, 2002

High stakes in reducing poverty

In the 2002 edition of its annual "State of World Population" report, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, or UNFPA, emphasizes that eliminating poverty and reducing the birthrate by raising the educational level of women will curb the population explosion, shrink the gap between rich and...

EDITORIALS

Dec 12, 2002

Uniting a divided party

It is hard not to feel a sense of deja vu about the comeback of Mr. Naoto Kan as president of the Democratic Party of Japan, a post he held in 1998-99. In Tuesday's leadership contest, Mr. Kan defeated Mr. Katsuya Okada, the deputy secretary general, by a wide margin, contrary to forecasts. His victory...

EDITORIALS

Dec 11, 2002

Moving in the right direction

Never in recent memory has a government advisory group engaged in such a bruising battle of words and ideas. Last week, following a stormy debate that caused its chairman to resign, a commission on privatizing debt-ridden highway corporations adopted a final report calling for a drastic cut in toll-road...

EDITORIALS

Dec 10, 2002

The larger, the better?

Japan has about 3,200 cities, towns and villages. The government and the Liberal Democratic Party, among others, think that is too many. They believe that small districts should be consolidated to improve administrative efficiency so that they can better meet the diverse needs of residents.

EDITORIALS

Dec 8, 2002

'I 've never seen a purple cow/I never hope to see one/But I can tell you anyhow/I'd rather see than be one," wrote the American humorist Gelett Burgess more than 100 years ago. Burgess is a man whose views we ought to pay more attention to. After all, he also supposedly invented the "blurb," by writing...

EDITORIALS

Dec 7, 2002

Controversial Aegis dispatch

Whether or not to send an Aegis destroyer to the Indian Ocean has been a touchy question ever since Japan indirectly joined in the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan about a year ago. The question was settled, officially at least, earlier this week when the government decided, after hemming and hawing,...

EDITORIALS

Dec 6, 2002

Aceh on the brink of peace

At long last, there is an end in sight to the two decades of deadly conflict in Indonesia's separatist province of Aceh. The Indonesian government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri and the Free Aceh Movement, the guerrilla group established in 1976, are expected to sign a peace agreement in Geneva next...

EDITORIALS

Dec 5, 2002

DPJ must assess its crisis

The resignation of Mr. Yukio Hatoyama as president of the Democratic Party of Japan, just two months after his re-election, is probably the most poignant reminder yet that the nation's largest opposition party is deeply divided. On Tuesday, taking the blame for his abortive plan to forge an opposition...

EDITORIALS

Dec 4, 2002

IOC stumbles but moves forward

The International Olympic Committee, at a general meeting in Mexico last week, discussed a proposal to drop three sports -- baseball, softball and the modern pentathlon -- from the 2008 Beijing Games, but in the end decided to postpone a decision until after the 2004 Games take place in Athens. IOC members...

EDITORIALS

Dec 3, 2002

Saudi Arabia's Faustian bargain

Ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia have come under increasing strain since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Suspicions about Saudi contributions to Islamic fundamentalist organizations and the kingdom's connections to international terrorism have raised questions about the durability...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Atsuyoshi Koike, the president and CEO of Rapidus, says there is a “sense of urgency” when it comes to Japan’s efforts in manufacturing semiconductors. “We have to make sure we are successful,” he says.

Atsuyoshi Koike’s big game: Fourth down and 2 nanometers to go

By Kazuaki Nagata and Richard Meyer

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