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COMMENTARY
Feb 19, 2003

Missile defense is an offense

BRUSSELS -- It is difficult to understand the Bush administration's determination to deploy a national missile defense system, or NMD. All test launches to date -- to prevent theoretical nuclear missile attacks -- have been either failures or "partial successes."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Feb 19, 2003

Liars: "They Threw Us In a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top"

It takes more talent than guts to defy categorization, but Liars, an art-punk quartet based in Brooklyn, has done so seemingly through sheer force of will. Out of the band's blend of angular beats, grating effects, compressed vocals, and nonlinear song structures comes a recognizable sonic manifesto...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Feb 18, 2003

A kind word, visa sponsorship and tax refunds

A kind word I was sitting in the NTT Telephone shop waiting to have a telephone repaired and a bit discouraged.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Feb 17, 2003

"Holes," "Love That Dog"

"Holes," Louis Sachar, Bloomsbury; 2000; 233 pp. It's hard to say why life is so downright unfair to some children. Take Stanley Yelnats: He gets bullied at school and is ignored by his teachers. And then one day, he gets hit on the head by a pair of sneakers that seems to fall out of the sky. He doesn't...
SOCCER / World cup
Feb 17, 2003

Japan cancels U.S. friendlies

The head of Japan's soccer federation said that two international friendlies in the United States in March will be canceled regardless of whether a U.S.-led coalition goes to war in Iraq.
COMMENTARY
Feb 17, 2003

Korean stability matters most to China

HONG KONG -- "China should step up and defuse the situation," an American official in Washington said to me in December, referring to the North Korean nuclear issue. "That's what a great power would do -- exert its influence and defuse the problem."
EDITORIALS
Feb 16, 2003

The micro and the macro

Have you noticed how the news has been running on two different tracks lately? The truth is, it probably always does, but every now and then the split suddenly seems more striking. On the one hand, there are the day-to-day ups and downs of human existence, everything from the weather to prognostications...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 16, 2003

An omiai conjurer of couples out of singles

Mitsuko Kai stifles a sigh as she watches her visitor, Yuko Saito, cross out one candidate after another.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 16, 2003

A world of fashion at your fingertips

Whether they're designers in search of inspiration, wardrobe masters or mistresses in the theater or movies, students, or just lovers of beautiful things, those interested in the history of women's clothing no longer have to beat a path to Kyoto to see the world's largest private collection of fashion...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 16, 2003

Making a match all manner of ways

It wasn't so long ago that the Japanese ideal was to be married by age 25, typically to someone handpicked by parents. At its core, matrimony was an economic arrangement with all the romantic overtones of a mortgage contract.
JAPAN
Feb 16, 2003

JFA cancels national team U.S. tour

Saburo Kawabuchi, chairman of the Japan Football Association, said Saturday the national team's soccer friendlies in North America scheduled for next month are to be canceled regardless of whether the United States goes to war with Iraq.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 15, 2003

J.A. Stam

At the end of the 1960s, when Joop Stam was a student at Keio Kokusai Center in Tokyo, people used to say: "That young man from Holland will go a long way. He typifies the modern young scholar, who is eager and able to take advantage of today's opportunities."
EDITORIALS
Feb 14, 2003

Japan's role in solving Iraq issue

How should Japan deal with the Iraq crisis? The question is gaining urgency as the United States gears up for a military campaign. Yet the government has so far given only vague answers, though the ambiguity is not difficult to understand. During a Diet debate on Wednesday, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi...
EDITORIALS
Feb 13, 2003

Helping 'refugees' from the North

North Korea is creating a new headache for the Japanese government: the plight of North Korean residents and their Japanese spouses who have now returned secretly to Japan from that impoverished communist state via China. The problem came to the fore last month when a Japanese woman who had gone to the...
BUSINESS
Feb 13, 2003

WTO spotlighted as trade chiefs gather for Tokyo meeting

Trade ministers from 25 nations will enter three days of intense negotiations in Tokyo on Friday as part of a new round of World Trade Organization trade liberalization talks. Here is a roundup of some basic facts on the organization and issues to be discussed.
COMMENTARY
Feb 13, 2003

No shortage of reasons why South Koreans dislike the U.S.

WASHINGTON -- Opinion polls from around the world show increasing numbers of people believe that the United States is arrogant, unilateralist and indifferent to key concerns of other nations -- even friends and allies. There is a rising belief that the U.S. has become a source of international tension...
COMMENTARY
Feb 13, 2003

The 'vision thing' still matters

LONDON -- In the ideal Middle East "dream scenario," U.N. weapons inspectors, gently prompted by American and British intelligence information, stumble on stores of chemical and biological weapons hidden in Iraq.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / NETWISE
Feb 13, 2003

Japanese get real on 2 Channel

It was 1975 when University of North Carolina graduate student Steve Bellovin developed a handful of short programs to facilitate communication via UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy) between the University of North Carolina and Duke University. The scripts were later rewritten in the computer language "C" and...
COMMENTARY
Feb 12, 2003

Koizumi shirking top duty

Over the past year, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi appears to have all but lost his enthusiasm for military contingency legislation. Protecting the lives and property of the Japanese people from armed attack is the most important duty of the prime minister as the supreme commander of the Self-Defense...
JAPAN
Feb 12, 2003

METI aims to help sick firms beat bankruptcy

Changes to business regulations and special tax breaks will be considered to help ailing companies avoid bankruptcy and get back on their feet, according to government draft guidelines released Tuesday.
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 12, 2003

Taking a chance on Vegas

LAS VEGAS (AP) The beach is out back by the wave pool. Sports betting and a nightclub are nearby. And in a small theater past the slot machines and gaming tables, a Broadway production of "Mamma Mia!" is trying to lure tourists away from gambling to settle in for more than two hours of ABBA tunes.
COMMENTARY
Feb 11, 2003

Sacrifices for material gain

In the 1980s, Japanese economists used to boast of their country's economic prowess and deride U.S. economic decline. To be sure, the U.S. manufacturing industry in those years fell into a miserable condition, and the nation suffered from ever-expanding trade and budget deficits. Yet things began changing...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 9, 2003

U.S. test of U.N. relevance

Time was when those threatening to go to war had to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt. Today we are asked to prove to the powerful, to their satisfaction, why they should not go to war. The U.N. inspectors don't have to prove that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction; Iraqi President Saddam Hussein...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 9, 2003

Yasukuni issue going to the dogs in Japan

When Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was in Moscow last month to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he found he had a little time on his hands. According to reports in several weeklies, Koizumi originally planned to spend one day in the Siberian city of Khabarovsk talking to North Korean leader...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 9, 2003

Role models for a changing nation

One welcome exception to the gloomy news in Japan last year was the unexpected awarding of a Nobel Prize in chemistry to an apparently ordinary company worker. Koichi Tanaka's steadfastness, lack of personal ambition and open, nice-guy persona were a refreshing throwback to a less cynical age, and his...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 9, 2003

Caddie rises to big game

Caddies are part of playing golf in Japan. So it is often with relief that Japanese golfers find they are allowed to negotiate a course without strangers in their midst when they play abroad.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 9, 2003

Golf: a sport that mirrors the nation

Forget indicators such as unemployment levels and interest rates; there's no simpler way to chart Japan's economic well-being than by tracing the ebb and flow of the popularity of golf.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Feb 8, 2003

Wanted: hosts for U.S. troops

MOSCOW -- Foreign-policy alignments have gone mad worldwide. A bizarre diplomatic coalition consisting of Russia, China, France and Germany now confronts the United States, Britain, Italy and Poland. Who could have imagined such a combination just 10 years ago besides readers of political thrillers?...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Feb 8, 2003

Here's a tip: You don't deserve one, pal

The only woman who has ever chased me was a willowy Japanese waitress who trailed me half a block from her restaurant door.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami