Toru Hashimoto, ultranationalist mayor of Osaka, was right when he said last week Japan was not alone in using what are euphemistically called comfort women as sex slaves for soldiers. He said soldiers living with the daily threat of death needed some way to let off steam, which was provided by the comfort women system.

As a matter of fact, most of the people in Taiwan take it for granted that they are Chinese. Sure, seven out of every ten people will claim they are Hoklo.

There is a nuclear reprocessing plant in the village of Rokkasho in the prefecture of Aomori at the northern tip of Honshu, Japan's largest island. Capable of putting out 9 tons of weapons-grade plutonium and 800 tons of uranium a year, it is due to complete active tests — the last stage before it starts commercial operation.

Taiwan Democracy Watch, an association of scholars organized in Taipei in 2008, held a “Free Man Declaration” forum last Tuesday.Dr. Yao Jen-to, a Tsing Hua University professor and a former aide to Tsai Ing-wen.

One thing Chiang Kai-shek learned during his brief Moscow stay in 1924 was how to organize the Kuomintang along the Leninist line. A Leninist party is one consisting of mostly intellectual revolutionaries organized not democratically but as a bureaucratic or semi-military hierarchy.

Richard Bush, a former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan, was in Taipei last week to launch a Chinese version of his new book, Uncharted Strait: The Future of China-Taiwan Relations.

“Taiwan Design Chiang” (台灣設計蔣) does not make any sense in either English or Chinese, per se, because it is a verbatim translation of the five logograms.

In “The Analects of Confucius,” disciples of China's great sage wrote, “The master did not talk about prodigies, force, disorders and gods.” He never attested to, asserted or debated claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, as well as other religious and metaphysical claims.

Tokyo and Washington seem to want nothing better than to prolong the current sovereignty row between Japan and China, which may touch off an accidental military skirmish off the disputed islands called Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese. In Taiwan the eight uninhabited islets are known as Tiaoyutai, which it claims are its inherent territory.

An absentee ballot is a vote cast by an eligible voter who is unable or unwilling to visit their designated polling station. Numerous methods have been devised to facilitate absentee voting. Increasing the ease of access to absentee ballots is seen by many as one way to improve voter turnout, though some countries require that a valid reason, such as infirmity or travel, be given before a voter can participate in an absentee ballot.