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Building blues

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In a moment of morbid humor that’s been lost with each subsequent retelling, earth scientist and professional doom-monger Bill McGuire once described Tokyo as “the…

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The Okinawan problem isn't about to disappear in a hurry

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The announcement by President Barack Obama of a high-level task force on Okinawa is a bid to defuse long-smoldering issues surrounding U.S. force deployment on…

Obama's China trip shows power shifting

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BEIJING — President Barack Obama's first visit to China underscored a shifting balance of power: two giants moving closer to being equals. In this week's choreographed show…

Japan has chance to be good mediator for Asia

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For many Japanese, closeness to other Asian countries may mean eating Chinese food at Tokyo restaurants or swooning over good-looking Korean film stars. But for…

Is chivalry dead on Tokyo trains?

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Often people comment on the civility of Japanese train stations: people queuing on the platform in two lines before splitting down the middle into single…

Anti-base Okinawans expect Hatoyama to end carrot and stick policy

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NAHA — Anti-base protesters in Okinawa, which hosts about 75% of the land area used for U.S. military facilities in Japan and half of the around 50,000…

U.S. risks following Japan's example of stagnancy

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WASHINGTON — Heavy government stimulus spending and near-zero interest rates did little to end a "lost decade" of stagnation and mushrooming debt in Japan. Some economists and…

Obama confronts an Asia reshaped by China's rise

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BEIJING — Days after coming to power in September, Japan's new prime minister broached forming a new East Asian trading bloc with rival China -- one that…

U.S. has misused its position as superpower

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WASHINGTON — Twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the accepted end of the Cold War, the United States has misused its position as…

10% jobless is Obama's new world

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WASHINGTON — For months he had warned it was coming but that did not ease the political shockwaves for President Barack Obama when U.S. unemployment topped 10%.…