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COMMENTARY
Mar 1, 2001

Bush presidency, Ehime Maru tragedy bring national security issues to the fore

The issue for 2001 is whether Japan's leaders will take responsibility for their own national security. The stage is set for them to make this choice and the United States is ready to cooperate no matter what decision they make.
JAPAN
Mar 1, 2001

Murakami balks in Diet testimony

Masakuni Murakami, the former Liberal Democratic Party heavyweight at the center of a widening bribery scandal, testified under oath before the Diet on Wednesday but refused to reply to questions that he claimed could incriminate him before his possible indictment by prosecutors.
JAPAN
Mar 1, 2001

Yamamoto receives 18 months for fraud

The Tokyo District Court on Wednesday sentenced former Lower House lawmaker Joji Yamamoto to 11/2 years in prison for defrauding the state out of more than 25 million yen.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 1, 2001

The spy game: high stakes, low payoffs

LONDON -- It's an impressive list: CIA official Aldrich Ames jailed for life in 1994 for spying for Moscow; CIA agent Harold Nicholson jailed for 23 years in 1997 for the same offense; FBI employee Earl Pitts sentenced to 27 years later the same year for passing information to Moscow; U.S. Army Col....
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2001

Moody's expects securities to grow

Moody's Investors Service Inc. said Wednesday that Japan's securitization market is expected to grow 20 percent to 40 percent in 2001 from the previous year to be worth between 3 trillion yen and 3.5 trillion yen.
MULTIMEDIA / SPORTS SCOPE
Mar 1, 2001

IOC delegates: the questions they should be asking

The International Olympic Committee has come Japan to check out Osaka's facilities for staging the 2008 Olympics.
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2001

Industrial output tumbles 3.9%

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry on Wednesday downgraded its assessment of industrial production for the second month in a row after January's output figures dropped a record 3.9 percent from the previous month.
JAPAN
Mar 1, 2001

Assemblies favor tough stance on diesel

In a growing trend among local governments to assert their authority, prefectural governors and some municipal leaders in the Tokyo metropolitan area are inclined to take tougher measures than the state against diesel-powered vehicles.
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2001

Nestle Japan, Seiyo Food plot Italian job

Seiyo Food Systems Inc. said Wednesday it has agreed with the Nestle Japan Group to jointly set up and operate a new chain of Italian restaurants.
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2001

NTT units predict sales will fall steeply in 2001

The two regional operators of the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. group said Wednesday they expect sales to fall steeply in fiscal 2001 due to intensifying price competition.
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2001

ACCJ opposes larger role for auditors

The American Chamber of Commerce in Japan on Wednesday called on the Japanese government to create a greater role for independent directors rather than enhancing the role of auditors in legislating corporate governance.
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2001

U.S. likely to further ease interest rates

New York share prices remain in a corrective phase, but the downturn could soon run its course.
JAPAN
Mar 1, 2001

Nikkei hits 29-month low

The Nikkei Stock Average plummeted to a 29-month closing low Wednesday as tumbling U.S. technology stocks and bleak data on Japan's economy dealt a double blow to the Tokyo equity market.
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2001

Margin buying bucks trend

The balance of shares bought on credit -- a sensitive indicator of investor sentiment -- turned lower last week for the first time in five weeks.
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2001

Exxon unit set to absorb subsidiary

TonenGeneral Sekiyu K.K., a Japanese unit of the Exxon Mobile Corp. group, said Wednesday it will absorb its wholly owned subsidiary Kygnus Sekiyu Seisei K.K. on July 1.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 1, 2001

Don't bet against China's industrial policy

Cambridge, ENGLAND -- At a recent conference in Berlin organized by the Institute of Asian Affairs of Hamburg, Ireland's leading China specialist said quite unequivocally that China's industrial policy has failed. As the speaker has long been known as one of the most vocal supporters of China's state-owned...
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2001

Housing starts suffer 11.1% decline

Japan's housing starts totaled 81,348 units in January, down 11.1 percent from a year earlier for the first downturn in four months, the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry said Wednesday.
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2001

French firms profiting from Japan

For many Japanese, France has long represented wine and fashion. That image, however, is changing with French companies in other business fields increasing their presence in Japan.
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2001

Economic group to tackle unified accounting standards

Ten private-sector economic organizations, including the Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren) and the Japanese Institute of Certified Public Accountants, announced Wednesday that they plan to set up a new body in July to map out unified standards for business accounting in Japan.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 1, 2001

NHK's hollow take on easy-money bubble era

What's impressive about the new Steven Soderbergh film, "Traffic," which opens here in April, is how thoroughly it presents all the ramifications of America's drug war by exclusively dramatic means: no charts, no explanations of cause and effect, no polemics. The movie's three separate plot vectors intersect...
JAPAN
Mar 1, 2001

105 million yen stolen from man's home

Five or six masked men entered the Tokyo home of a major telephone dating club operator and stole around 105 million yen in cash and 30 million yen in jewelry from three safes, police said Wednesday.
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2001

Cheap burgers add sauce to McDonald's sales

Favorable sales of half-priced hamburgers boosted earnings of McDonald's Co. (Japan) last year, with its sales for 2000 expanding 9.3 percent to a record high of 431.1 billion yen for the seventh straight year-on-year rise, the company said Wednesday.
JAPAN
Mar 1, 2001

Researchers gain interferon insight

Shigehiro Odo and colleagues at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, describes how the antitumor drug interferon-a affects the body clock and how this may lead to serious side effects in an article in today's issue of Nature Medicine.
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2001

Sega bets on silver lining in Dreamcast's demise

Sony Corp. emerged as the victor in the battle of the video game consoles in Japan, but the loser may prove to be the sweetheart among consumers.
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2001

Sansui continues to struggle with losses

Sansui Electric Co. said Wednesday it posted a group net loss of 1.33 billion yen in the year to December, compared with the previous year's loss of 1.86 billion yen.
JAPAN
Mar 1, 2001

Admiral gives apologies to families of missing

A special envoy dispatched by U.S. President George W. Bush apologized Wednesday in Tokyo to representatives of relatives of nine people still missing after the sinking of a high school fisheries training ship by a U.S. submarine.
COMMUNITY
Mar 1, 2001

Shiseido updates Braille manuals

Shiseido has updated the Braille and large-print versions of its skincare and makeup manuals and the Braille labels on its products, to make its cosmetic and skincare lines easier to use for those with sight-related disabilities.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Mar 1, 2001

International spa secrets

Some of the best recipes for a do-it-yourself spa come from those cultures known to go in for a bit of sybaritic pampering. Japan is high up on the list: A highly developed sense of aesthetics, a long tradition of bathing and a sublime appreciation of ritual have helped beauty practices here evolve into...

Longform

A sinkhole in Yashio, which emerged in January, was triggered by a ruptured, aging sewer pipe. Authorities worry that similar sections of infrastructure across the country are also at risk of corrosion.
That sinking feeling: Japan’s aging sewers are an infrastructure time bomb