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COMMENTARY / World
Oct 8, 2010

China debates economy, while U.S. tempts disaster

HONG KONG — The world's financial leaders are gathering in Washington this weekend for crucial annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Never has the world so needed leadership, imagination and creative thinking, yet never has it been so lacking, with leaders sticking their...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 12, 2010

Potash holds lessons for China on how to grow its economy

HONG KONG — The hostile takeover bid by Australia's BHP Billiton for Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, Canada, is worthy of a case study by Harvard Business Review, but it is also a fascinating example of the adventures and misadventures, opportunities, and considerable failings of global capitalism at...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 8, 2010

Earth over a barrel of oil

HONG KONG — Oil prices continue to fluctuate nervously with every report or rumor that the world economy is either on the mend or heading for double dip recession. They slithered again when it became clear that the U.S. economy is still in trouble. Ben Bernanke, the U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, and...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 4, 2010

$1 trillion wasted on wars

HONG KONG — The calculator busily counting out how much money the United States has spent on wars since 2001 has raced past $1 trillion — $1,024 billion plus at the start of August. There is little point in trying to give a more refined figure since the clock ticks remorselessly on, mesmerizingly...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 3, 2010

China's economic pride

HONG KONG — In international business and finance, no less than in politics, diplomacy, defense and control of tiny strategic islands and islets in the seas around it, China is showing an increasingly assertive tendency with the clear message that it will not allow itself to be pushed around by anyone....
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 28, 2010

Pedal faster, not slower

LONDON — Memo to Naoto Kan, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, and Hu Jintao and Manmohan Singh: Running an economy is like riding a bicycle — if you maintain a good speed, you can make progress; but if you reduce your speed, there is always the danger of losing your balance,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 25, 2010

Claims of U.S. financial reform presuppose great leap of hope

LONDON — Champagne cork headlines were popping all over the United States the week before last when the Senate passed financial reform measures variously described as "a sweeping overhaul of the big banks" . . . "the biggest changes for generations" . . . "the greatest cleanup since the Great Depression"...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 22, 2010

Immelt's China meltdown

HONG KONG — General Electric Co. Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt has certainly stirred up a hornet's nest in China with his words of wisdom about doing business there. In the most publicized supposedly private speech of the year, Immelt grumbled that it was getting very difficult for big companies...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 26, 2010

Appreciating the renminbi

HONG KONG — Global stock and foreign exchange markets were fast out of the blocks to lead the applause for China's decision to free the exchange rate of the renminbi. Clearly licking their lips at the prospect of greater foreign access to China's fabled market of 1.3 billion consumers, stock markets...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 20, 2010

A presumptuous command of oil

HONG KONG — Bosses of Big Oil have solemnly assured a U.S. congressional inquiry that they would never, ever, be as reckless or negligent as BP in causing the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 6, 2010

E-books look set to swamp us just as microwave ovens once did

The "microwave phenomenon" is with us again. I use this term to describe a product that arrives on the market before its time, then disappears for a while before returning with a vengeance to strike at people's hearts and wallets.
COMMENTARY
Apr 15, 2010

Why precious is strategic

Water, food, mineral ores and fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas are resources of the greatest strategic import. They hold the key to human development and, in the case of water and food, to even human survival.
BUSINESS / SOUTH KOREAN JOURNALIST SYMPOSIUM
Apr 10, 2010

S. Korean recovery masks tough challenges ahead

South Korea managed a relatively quick recovery from the global financial crisis — with a 0.2 percent gross domestic product increase in 2009 — but the country will need to invest in new engines of the economy to secure future growth, veteran journalists from the country told a recent symposium in...
Reader Mail
Apr 4, 2010

Wrong place for make-believe

Is the April 1 online article "Chinese consortium bids to purchase Tokyo Tower" a joke? The writing is too close to authentic for an April Fool's thing. It is confusing, not funny. I don't think newspapers should be playing April Fool's jokes. Do not play games with your readers! What is The Japan Times...
JAPAN
Apr 1, 2010

Chinese consortium bids to purchase Tokyo Tower

When Japan changes from analog to terrestrial digital TV broadcasting from July 24, 2011, the Tokyo Sky Tree, now under construction in Tokyo's Sumida Ward, will be the source of these transmissions for the Greater Kanto area. One big question that has remained unanswered up to now is what will become...
JAPAN
Feb 17, 2010

TV rivals boldly bet on 3-D

Television viewers will be carried into a new dimension this year when they shed their old sets and go 3-D.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Feb 3, 2010

Sony forges on with Transfer Jet; Planex device tries to do it all

Easy access: Big things have small beginnings, or at least Sony hopes. The company has launched the much- anticipated Transfer Jet system with a wafer of plastic at a miniscule 2 grams, and it comes out this month. The principle behind Transfer Jet is that the technology can transfer data at high speeds,...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 25, 2009

Japanese hospitals take interest in 'medical tourists'

While many Japanese companies have gone global over the years, making companies like Toyota, Sony and Canon household names in every corner of the world, the Japanese health care industry is focused largely on the domestic market and has long been shielded from pressure for change.
JAPAN
Dec 15, 2009

LDP bedfellows out; no biz as usual

Takeshi Miyamoto is a man on a mission, but things haven't been going his way.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 5, 2009

Jackson, Spidey not part of Sony's 3-D plan

Michael Jackson videos or the next "Spider-Man" movie won't be among the titles that Sony Corp. releases in 3-D as it gears up to boost TV sales, according to Chief Executive Howard Stringer.
BUSINESS / THE VIEW FROM EUROPE
Aug 24, 2009

Iconic bullet train has yet to find its place in global rail industry

Without a doubt, one of Japan's most iconic technological achievements of the last century was the bullet train. Ushering in a new era of prosperity and propelling the entire nation to the forefront of modernity, the shinkansen was an unqualified success.

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan