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JAPAN
May 22, 2001

19 hurt as jumbo jet hits rough air

Nineteen passengers and crew aboard an All Nippon Airways jumbo jet bound for Guam from Kansai airport were injured when the plane hit turbulence early Monday, the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry said.
MORE SPORTS
May 22, 2001

Skylarks dump on Seagulls 17-0

YOKOHAMA -- Koji Sugisawa scored on a 59-yard run and Yusuke Yabe registered two quarterback sacks as the Onward Skylarks blanked defending champions the Recruit Seagulls 17-0 Sunday at Yokohama Stadium in a Pearl Bowl semifinal.
SOCCER / J. League / ON THE BALL
May 22, 2001

Jubilo stung by cancelation of Club World C'ship

"I'm thinking about going to Spain this summer," a taxi driver in Iwata told me Saturday. "It's the World Championship and Jubilo will be there, you see."
JAPAN
May 22, 2001

Suspicions true: communists defied ban in U.S.-run Okinawa

A secret communist group was formed within the Okinawa People's Party on Okinawa Island in the 1950s during U.S. rule when such organizations were outlawed, according to the latest study by a group of researchers.
BUSINESS
May 22, 2001

Finance Ministry to examine road-fund use

The Finance Ministry's top bureaucrat said Monday his ministry will examine whether to expand the use of special revenues appropriated for road construction, as proposed by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa.
LIFE / Travel
May 22, 2001

Visiting the Little Prince at Hakone

Breathtaking mountain scenery, a walk through a French village, Provencal cooking and a meeting with the doppelganger of a world-famous author -- sounds like a nice day trip. Especially when you can do it all without leaving Kanto.
JAPAN
May 22, 2001

Labor leader urges Japan not to resume Myanmar aid

More than 3 million people have been forced into slave labor under the military government in Myanmar, according to a Myanmarese labor leader visiting Japan.
JAPAN
May 22, 2001

Judicial reform panel calls for more lawyers, jury system, faster trials

The Judicial Reform Council released on Monday a draft of its final report on structural legal reforms, calling for more lawyers and better public access to them, more public participation in the judiciary, and juries whose decisions would be nonbinding.
MORE SPORTS
May 22, 2001

Arita wins gold for Japan in taekwando

Japan's Mitsushige Arita downed Australia's Adam Wright 3-1 in the men's taekwondo 80-kg final Monday to clinch the gold medal for the hosts on the third day of competition at the East Asian Games.
LIFE / Travel
May 22, 2001

Mists of time and fable fade at Janakpur

JANAKPUR, Nepal -- There are few places where history and allegory blur more easily than the Indian subcontinent. The line dividing fact and fable meanders and shifts like the great Ganges River that figures so prominently in both.
BASEBALL / MLB
May 22, 2001

BlueWave hit Marines

Nobuyuki Ebisu pitched a four-hit shutout for his first complete-game win of the year and Tatsuya Shindo drove in both runs as the Orix BlueWave edged the Lotte Marines 2-0 in Kobe on Monday.
BUSINESS
May 22, 2001

Retirement benefits eat up Suzuki's profits

Suzuki Motor Corp. said Monday its group net profit slid 24.7 percent in the year ended March 31 to 20.25 billion yen due chiefly to shortfall-covering for retirement benefits reserves.
BUSINESS
May 22, 2001

BOJ's view of economy unchanged

The Bank of Japan on Monday left its gloomy economic assessment unchanged, saying economic activity remains in an adjustment phase due largely to weak industrial output and exports.
BUSINESS
May 22, 2001

Asahi Optical to shutter lens plant, slash jobs

Asahi Optical Co., the financially ailing maker of Pentax cameras, said Monday it will cut personnel by 13 percent and close a domestic lens plant under a new medium-term management plan.
JAPAN
May 22, 2001

Minister to seek ban on surrogate childbirth

Chikara Sakaguchi, minister of health, labor and welfare, said Monday he will try to have legislation banning surrogate child-bearing enacted quickly, after the first such birth in Japan was announced Saturday.
ENVIRONMENT
May 22, 2001

China's shifting sands close in on Beijing

BEIJING -- Mother Nature has got it in for Wang Yongxian. In 1988, the farmer fled his hillside cave when flooding triggered landslides on Dragon Treasure Mountain, 70 km north of Beijing. Forced to abandon their traditional cave homes, Wang and neighbors moved down to the safety of the plain. Or so...
JAPAN
May 22, 2001

Hansen's disease patients fight on

A total of 923 former Hansen's disease patients filed a lawsuit against the state Monday, demanding it pay them 115 million yen each in compensation for forcing them into isolation to undergo treatment for the disease.
JAPAN
May 22, 2001

Matsushita, Hitachi mull tieup

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and Hitachi Ltd. are in the final stage of negotiating a cooperation pact that would allow them to streamline their home appliance units and compete more efficiently with foreign manufacturers.
EDITORIALS
May 21, 2001

Wagner in Jerusalem

A battle is taking place in Israel that has nothing to do with the ongoing struggle between Israelis and Palestinians. This one is being waged among Jews themselves. But it is just as bitter as that other fight -- and just as pertinent, in its own way, to the question of Israel's present and future identity....
JAPAN
May 21, 2001

Mob boss held over real estate fraud

Police on Sunday arrested a top leader of Sumiyoshi-kai, one of Japan's largest yakuza groups, for allegedly conspiring to obstruct compulsory seizure of assets by creditors, officials said.
JAPAN
May 21, 2001

Tanaka hit for alleged remarks on Lee's visa

Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka came under fire over the weekend from both her ruling Liberal Democratic Party colleagues and opposition leaders over allegations that she told China earlier this month that Japan will not again issue an entry visa to former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui.
COMMENTARY / World
May 21, 2001

Settling Asia's sea of disputes

Last month's spy-plane incident between the United States and China inadvertently highlighted South China Sea territorial disputes as a focal point of possible international confrontation. Although the incident is viewed primarily through the lens of U.S.-China relations, it demonstrates the international...
JAPAN
May 21, 2001

Tokyo judge arrested over alleged sex with child

A Tokyo High Court judge has been arrested on suspicion of paying a 14-year-old girl to have sex with him in January, in violation of the law banning child prostitution, police said Sunday.
BUSINESS
May 21, 2001

Japan's leadership needed to preserve free trade

President George W. Bush's remarks on trade to the Council of America's early last week and his request to Congress for Trade Promotion Authority (formerly called "Fast Track") later in the week signal an important new step in expanding the trade relationship between Japan and the United States, and...
JAPAN
May 21, 2001

Survey finds hospice care in short supply

The number of hospice facilities for terminally ill cancer patients in Japan remains far smaller than the demand, covering only 1.8 percent of cancer patients who died in this country in 1999, it was learned Sunday.
COMMENTARY
May 21, 2001

Better a wooden chicken than a tornado

As soon as Diet member Makiko Tanaka was sworn in as foreign minister, a powerful "Tornado Makiko" rampaged throughout the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, sending some of the officials way up in the air and forcing others to retreat to hospital. For onlookers, the greater the chaos the more fun it was to...

Longform

Construction equipment sits idle in a park near Shiba Toshogu shrine in Tokyo's Minato Ward. While Japan has a history of treating its trees with reverence, green coverage is said to be lacking in most of the major cities.
Do Japan's trees no longer occupy the sacred space they used to?