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OLYMPICS
Jun 15, 2004

Asahara, Tamesue added to team

Nobuharu Asahara and Dai Tamesue, competitors in the men's 100 meters and 400-meter hurdles, were among the 27 officially named to the Olympic team at the Japan Association of Athletics Federations board meeting on Monday.
COMMENTARY
Jun 15, 2004

Strike a balance on defense

As the Self-Defense Forces prepare to greet the 50th anniversary of their founding next month, the prime minister's advisory panel on security and defense is updating Japan's "national defense program outline."
EDITORIALS
Jun 13, 2004

Smiling faces at the G8 summit

Fortunately for the leaders of the world's leading industrialized nations, very little is actually expected of their annual summits. The meetings have become photo opportunities at which they assure the world of their unity and sense of purpose and then announce some major initiative to prove the point....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 13, 2004

Things as they are, not how they seem

HAIKU ACTIVITIES: Asian Arts and Crafts for Creative Kids, by Patricia Donegan, illustrations by Masturzh Jeffrey. Boston, Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 64 pp., 2003, $9.95 (cloth). Though intended for young readers, this is a clear explication from which those of any age may learn. Indeed, the mature reader...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 13, 2004

Banking on Japan

SAVING THE SUN: A Wall Street Gamble to Rescue Japan From Its Trillion-Dollar Meltdown, by Gillian Tett. New York: Random House Books, 2004, 2,940 yen (paper). This is a remarkable saga about the demise of Long Term Credit Bank and its improbable recovery as Shinsei Bank. It is a story about the Japanese...
Features
Jun 13, 2004

Signs of life

Divorce is up; population growth is down. Spitting on the street: in; holding the door: out. Politicians waver back and forth on policy, their party platforms neither here nor there.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 13, 2004

An 'outsider' finds insight into Japan's bad-loan crisis

Just 33 years old when she headed the Tokyo Bureau of the Financial Times, Gillian Tett took an unusual route to the heart of Japan's business world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 13, 2004

Ludacris

'Flow" is considered the basic skill of an MC but if you asked any rapper to define it they'd probably have a hard time. It has something to do with cadence, alliteration, internal rhyme and tone; but in the end it's about conveying the impression that the rapper has total command of the words being...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 13, 2004

Tokyo festival puts down roots

More than 20 years ago, pianist Kyoko Edo, composer Maki Ishii and musicologist Takashi Funayama put their heads together in a bar in Tokyo. While sipping their drinks, the three agreed that Tokyo needed a music festival along the lines of those held in Paris and Berlin each year. That was the beginning...
COMMENTARY
Jun 13, 2004

Personality could crown Gordon Brown

LONDON -- Britain is governed by an unhappy couple -- a pair of men whose relationship excites more attention than any other aspect of British politics.
Japan Times
Features
Jun 13, 2004

Front-line fighters

Squeezed between stacks of files and computer equipment in a two-room apartment in Tokyo's Takadanobaba area, Chizuko Ikegami and several volunteers are manning the phones. Round the clock, day in, day out, PLACE Tokyo receives calls from people desperately seeking advice after being diagnosed with...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jun 13, 2004

Cops and citizens bid to blitz street sleaze

In an ideal society, various branches of the state interact to put criminals behind bars. Talk to those involved in law enforcement, though, and most will say there's only so much they can do without the cooperation of private citizens.
Features
Jun 13, 2004

Shaking off 'shame'

In a civilized society, people should not be scared to talk about their ailments -- especially when the illness may have been contracted from medical product infected with a potentially fatal virus.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 13, 2004

BBC documentary "How to Be a Prince" on NHK BS-1 and more

If you're stumped by Japan's pension system and ticked off by the fact that you'll now be paying more and receiving less, then you might want to tune in to this week's two-hour "Tuesday Special" (Fuji TV, 7 p.m.), which will explain things about the pension system "that no one has ever told you before."...
COMMENTARY
Jun 13, 2004

Freedom to end up different

MANILA -- Ideological fuzziness has become a hallmark of politics. Instead of accentuating ideological positions, politicians deliberately demonstrate vagueness. This, their advisers argue, prevents the politicians from alienating strategic interest groups crucial for victory in elections.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 13, 2004

Catching up with an indie-rock legend

In their first incarnation, Mission of Burma existed a mere four years, from 1979 to 1983. They were barely known outside of their hometown, Boston. They never sold more than a few thousand records.
Japan Times
Features
Jun 13, 2004

Sea changes on sex crime

Tokyo office worker Kyoko Igarashi, in her 20s and living alone, noticed that a man who'd been hanging around her neighborhood had started to loiter outside the door of her second-floor apartment -- just beyond the peep-hole.
COMMENTARY
Jun 13, 2004

The torture of losing moral high ground

LOS ANGELES -- John F. Kennedy was no saint as president -- and America is not God. But, indisputably, JFK did inspire countless people at home and around the world to aspire to a higher standard. When Kennedy implored Americans to "ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 13, 2004

European Parliament signals right turn

LONDON -- This weekend the European Union faces its five-year parliamentary makeover as voters across an enlarged union go to the polls. Results will be shaped by three impulses:
Features
Jun 13, 2004

Momentum building toward a transformed Japan

The "lost decade" story of teetering banks, an imploding Nikkei and skyrocketing unemployment has been overdone, and overlooks many interesting and dynamic developments. Too much of what is happening in contemporary Japan cannot be explained by media images of social gridlock and economic stagnation....
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 13, 2004

Murakami's job guide for teens lights the pipe of dreams

In mid-May, NHK's nightly news feature "Closeup Gendai" looked at the current post-university recruitment situation from the viewpoint of the recruit. For the past decade, the main story with regard to this issue has been the difficulty of finding work as more and more companies restructured along nontraditional...
MORE SPORTS
Jun 12, 2004

Yamaguchi one stroke off pace

WILMINGTON, Del. -- Japan's Chiharu Yamaguchi fired a bogey-free 4-under-par 67 to grab a tie for second place, one shot off the pace in the first round of the LPGA Championship on Thursday.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jun 12, 2004

Martin Katz

Recently Martin Katz came on a first visit to Japan. He brought to exhibit in Tokyo a collection of diamond jewelry valued at 10 billion yen. The collection included many pieces worn by Hollywood stars at the red-carpeted award ceremonies of the Oscars. Martin is widely known as the jeweler to whom Hollywood's...
COMMUNITY
Jun 12, 2004

Natural Healing Center valuable online resource

There is a misleading blonde blue-eyed softness about Sascha Hewitt. Actually she is as strong as on ox, which she ably demonstrates by lugging three heavy bags from her home in Tokyo's Shimo-Meguro to where we meet in Shibuya.
BUSINESS
Jun 12, 2004

Ashikaga Bank plans to cut 15% of workforce

Ashikaga Bank, now under temporary state control, said Friday it will eliminate 15 percent of its workforce by the end of fiscal 2006 as part of its new business improvement program.

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight