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JAPAN
Aug 19, 2010

Flickers of hope for nuke abolitionists

HIROSHIMA — In Hiroshima, this place where a fearful age was born one fiery instant 65 years ago, the Flame of Peace still flickers on, awaiting the day when the world is rid of nuclear weapons.
EDITORIALS
Aug 6, 2010

Accelerate nuclear disarmament

This year Hiroshima and Nagasaki hold their peace memorial services to mark the 65th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of them as the world feels the "global momentum toward a nuclear weapons-free world," as U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon observes. It is important that every nation and citizens...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 17, 2010

Briton looks through lens with an eye to change

Japan-based photographer and activist El-Branden Brazil quotes Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama: "If you think you're too small to make a difference, sleep in the room with a mosquito."
EDITORIALS
Jul 15, 2010

A Spanish 'beauty' in South Africa

The 2010 World Cup held in South Africa ended Sunday with Spain winning its first championship by defeating the Netherlands 1-0 on Andres Iniesta's goal four minutes from the end of extra time. Spain is the third national team to become world and European champion at the same time.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 12, 2010

Quantitative analysts take on the 'Beautiful Game'

HONG KONG — Sepp Blatter and the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the organizers of the World Cup, had better watch out — the quants have arrived and have put their infamous models to work in predicting the outcome of the World Cup that has just kicked off in South Africa....
COMMENTARY / World
May 23, 2010

Nuclear disarmament depends on two decades of sustained will

BERLIN — As the recent U.N. and Washington summits have demonstrated, nuclear arms control and disarmament are among the top issues on the world's political agenda. They are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Indeed, 2010 will determine whether U.S. President Barack Obama's vision of a...
JAPAN
May 12, 2010

Japan avoiding initiative in nonnuclear movement

The August 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings killed tens of thousands of people outright and drew a line in history between the prenuclear world and what came afterward.
COMMENTARY / World
May 5, 2010

Nuclear disarmament goal a harmful myth

MOSCOW — Russia and the United States have signed a new strategic nuclear-arms reduction treaty (START). Officially, the treaty cuts their weapons by one-third; in fact, each party will decommission only several dozen.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
May 2, 2010

Renho: Japan's fiscal firebrand

Renho, a first-term Upper House member from the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, shot to stardom in Japan last November when, as a member of a government committee tasked with screening ministries' budget requests, she had several fierce, face-to-face battles with bureaucrats.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 14, 2010

Who should lead the IMF?

HONG KONG — With the popularity of Nicolas Sarkozy plummeting in French opinion polls and with Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) winning a good reputation as head of the International Monetary Fund, speculation is already swirling about when Strauss-Kahn will formally quit the fund to seek glory as president...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 2, 2010

Whose GDP is No. 2 misses point

HONG KONG — News headlines this month proclaimed that Japan is still the world's second-biggest economy, ahead of its neighbor China. Gross domestic product figures for 2009 showed Japan with $5.085 trillion against China's $4.91 trillion.
COMMENTARY
Feb 19, 2010

Japan, China, past, present

China's recent economic progress coupled with its growing assertiveness in international politics has, in Asia, Europe and the U.S., given rise to some concern and a number of commentaries about the role of China in international politics.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 17, 2010

Perilous U.S.-China games

BEIJING — Beijing is increasingly playing hardball on every issue that brings it into contact and potential conflict with the rest of the world: democracy in Hong Kong; U.S. arms sales to Taiwan; the visit of the Dalai Lama to the White House; sanctions against Iran; the value of the renminbi; the...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jan 31, 2010

Universal count, use of one ball will boost status of NPB

How about that?
COMMENTARY
Jan 27, 2010

Surprise! More gas coming

Sometimes a quite simple new discovery or technological breakthrough changes everything, making nonsense of yesterday's apparently safe assumptions and expert projections.
COMMENTARY
Jan 6, 2010

China wants it both ways

China is a schizophrenic power, a developing country on select international issues but a rising superpower that sees itself in the same league as the United States in other matters, with its new muscular confidence on open display. At the recent Copenhagen climate-change summit meeting, China was the...
COMMENTARY
Dec 20, 2009

Wake up a friend about China at Christmas

LOS ANGELES — Attention last-minute holiday shoppers: We have an easy-to-purchase gift to recommend. And we guarantee that it will fit all sizes, shapes and tastes. This is assuming your intended recipients are intelligent, literate and eager to learn about the world.
BUSINESS
Dec 7, 2009

Globalized road to recovery will be bumpy, U.K. economist warns

Even though many economies appear to be emerging from recession, the road to recovery is going to be pocked with setbacks and slippages in the coming year, with prospects for future growth clouded by the long-term effects of the global financial crisis, a British expert said at a recent seminar in Tokyo....
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Dec 5, 2009

FIFA's manipulation of playoff draw farcical

LONDON — Just in case you had forgotten, FIFA's motto is Fair Play.
EDITORIALS
Nov 25, 2009

The shame of growing hunger

According to the United Nations, more than 1 billion people — one of every six persons on this planet — go hungry each day. In a world of unprecedented prosperity, that statistic is shameful. More appalling still, the number of undernourished individuals is growing despite rising levels of affluence...
COMMENTARY
Oct 16, 2009

Summit highlights media problems in China

HONG KONG — It seems that almost every week brings new signs of China's rise, with a commensurate increase in its international influence and soft power as well as in its economic, political and military clout.
EDITORIALS
Oct 14, 2009

Nobel invests hope in leadership

U.S. President Barack Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize after less than nine months in office. His critics at home and abroad say the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision came too early since Mr. Obama cannot yet claim any concrete achievement in dealing with challenging global issues.
COMMENTARY
Sep 25, 2009

China's two-sided 'miracle' should warn the ebullient

CHANGCHUN/LONDON — Is China the economic locomotive that will lift the world back onto the growth path and help eradicate its vast debts?
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 9, 2009

In Hatoyama's 'fraternity,' people the end, not means

An opinion piece by Democratic Party of Japan President Yukio Hatoyama that was originally published in the September edition of the Japanese monthly journal Voice has triggered controversy in the United States for appearing to have an antiglobalization bent.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 8, 2009

Global solidarity to denuclearize

If nuclear weapons epitomize the forces that would divide and destroy the world, they can only be overcome by the solidarity of ordinary citizens. This solidarity has the power to make hope an irresistible force transforming history.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Sep 6, 2009

Donald Keene: A life lived true to the words

Donald Keene is one of the greatest scholars of Japanese literature and has been highly influential in the establishment of Japanese studies in the West.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 27, 2009

Promise and peril of global change

MUNICH — Panta rhei. Everything flows.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 26, 2009

Pope's dream of heaven on Earth

HONG KONG — Of all the criticisms and critiques of the state of the world since the financial crisis that triggered global recession, the most devastating and yet the most profound and constructive came this month from such an unusual and unlikely source that many media ignored them. Yet the comments...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jun 28, 2009

Priorities and politics 'must change fast' to head off global calamity

The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer declared: "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

Longform

Ayumi Matsuki, a priestess at Yoshiwara Shrine, shows off some "o-mamori" charms. She says visitors to the shrine have increased since the NHK drama “Unbound” began airing this month.
Tracing Tsutaya Juzaburo, Edo’s media maverick