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COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
May 19, 2001

Satellite radio: a commuter's best friend

Ever wonder how Japanese people can sleep on trains? Ever wonder how they know exactly when to wake up at their stop? I've finally figured it out: They're not really sleeping. They're listening to satellite radio. Satellite-radio stations offer a variety of programs, many of them designed with Japan's...
JAPAN
May 19, 2001

Warrant issued for Sumiyoshi-kai chairman

Police obtained an arrest warrant Friday for the chairman of Sumiyoshi-kai, one of Japan's largest yakuza gangs, on suspicion of conspiring with a Tokyo realtor to evade a creditors' asset seizure, police officials said.
BUSINESS
May 19, 2001

Matsushita, Bayer enter into tieup

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. said Friday it has agreed with Bayer Corp. of the United States to jointly develop, manufacture and market diagnostic products.
JAPAN
May 19, 2001

Farmers' land improvement unions diverted membership dues to LDP

Government-subsidized "land improvement unions" of farmers in 17 prefectures have misappropriated union membership fees worth 46.13 million yen since fiscal 1996 to pay for union leaders' membership fees for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and to aid LDP lawmakers, the Agriculture Ministry said this...
BUSINESS
May 19, 2001

Meager gains in premiums precede mergers of insurers

Increased competition saw premium revenue rise only incrementally at Japan's largest property insurance companies, according to fiscal 2000 earnings reports released Friday.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
May 19, 2001

Dana Neufer

Dana Neufer had never lived anywhere other than the Midwest of America until she came to Japan. Her husband's employment with General Motors brought the family here in 1988, when their daughter Erin was still very small. Dana went into a hospital in western Tokyo to have her second child, Jeffrey. "That...
EDITORIALS
May 18, 2001

Poisoning the air and the airwaves

The Saitama District Court has ruled in favor of TV Asahi in a damage suit filed against the network over its report that high levels of dioxin, a toxic substance, had been found in vegetables in Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture. Farmers in the area claimed that the report spread rumors that vegetables...
JAPAN
May 18, 2001

Child abuse found rising as 16 die in three months

Abuse claimed the lives of 16 children from January through March, up by six from the same period last year, with the total number of reported victims rising by 14 to 53, the National Police Agency said Thursday.
BUSINESS
May 18, 2001

IYBank eyes regional tieups to expand ATM network

IYBank, a new bank specializing in automated services, will actively seek tieups with regional banks, IYBank President Takashi Anzai said.
BUSINESS
May 18, 2001

NTT group's pretax profits tumbled 12% in '00

Declining profits from fixed-line services -- once the mainstay of the telecom sector -- bit into the pretax profits of the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone group in fiscal 2000.
BUSINESS
May 18, 2001

Mitsui posts 55% gain in group pretax profits

Major trading house Mitsui & Co. said Thursday its consolidated pretax profits for fiscal 2000 expanded 54.7 percent from the previous year to 79.63 billion yen, helped by securities sales.
COMMENTARY / World
May 18, 2001

Beijing masters tit-for-tat trade policy

CAMBRIDGE, England -- China is on a steep learning curve. There is a tendency to forget that only 20 years ago, China had none of the institutions of a market economy -- nor the trained personnel to operate them.
JAPAN
May 18, 2001

'Elderly households' hit record 6.2 million

Households comprising only elderly residents or only elderly residents and children have topped 6 million for the first time, according to a survey released Thursday by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.
BUSINESS
May 18, 2001

Sony, Toshiba to make thinner chip technology

Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp. will jointly develop processing and design technology for producing system large-scale integrated circuits with widths of 0.07 micron to 0.1 micron, the two announced Thursday.
BUSINESS
May 18, 2001

Ease 'green' car definition: lobby

The nation's auto industry group will ask the government to include gasoline-powered, low-emission vehicles among the environmentally friendly cars the government plans to buy, the head of the group said Thursday.
JAPAN
May 18, 2001

Pygmy hippo survives debut at Ueno Zoo

A baby pygmy hippopotamus born on April 24 at Tokyo's Ueno Zoo made its first public appearance Wednesday.
BUSINESS
May 18, 2001

Nissan posts record profit in fiscal 2000

Nissan Motor Co. said Thursday it posted record group net profits of 331.1 billion yen for fiscal 2000.
JAPAN
May 18, 2001

Koizumi rejects Beijing's demand for text revision

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Thursday rejected China's demand to revise a controversial junior high school history textbook, but said he will work to improve ties with Beijing.
BUSINESS
May 18, 2001

Man on street more optimistic

The economic outlook of workers with jobs particularly sensitive to economic shifts showed an improvement in April for the first turnaround in three months, the Cabinet Office said Thursday.
BUSINESS
May 18, 2001

Tepco, three banks buy into Recruit

Tokyo Electric Power Co. and three Japanese banks bought stakes in Recruit Co., a labor market publishing and information conglomerate, in late March, industry sources said Thursday.
JAPAN
May 18, 2001

Group aims to help stalking victims

KYOTO -- In an effort to provide more effective help to stalking victims in the Kansai region, a six-member network, including lawyers, public notaries and a security firm, was formed Thursday.
COMMENTARY / World
May 18, 2001

Tokyo ready to beat the drum for IAEA nuclear arms protocol

In a rare diplomatic initiative toward curbing the global proliferation of nuclear weapons, Japan will host an international conference next month to step up efforts to prevent the spread of the deadly weapons in the Asia-Pacific region.

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?