search

 
 
BUSINESS
Jan 27, 2001

FSA to tighten insurance industry rules

The Financial Services Agency plans to tighten its supervisory controls over life and nonlife insurance companies in a bid to keep a closer watch over the nation's hard-pressed insurance industry.
JAPAN
Jan 27, 2001

CPI tumbled 0.7% in 2000

Consumer prices in Japan dropped by a record 0.7 percent in 2000 for the second successive yearly decline, the government said Friday.
EDITORIALS
Jan 27, 2001

Remembering Queen Victoria

Britain this week celebrated an anniversary that may have prompted more national self-reflection than either of the two competing millennial observations did.
JAPAN
Jan 27, 2001

Isahaya Bay dike in new environmental row over seaweed

Just when criticism of a contentious land reclamation project in Nagasaki Prefecture's Isahaya Bay appeared to have blown over, the issue has been rekindled with reports that large amounts of cultivated seaweed in the Ariake Sea, which flows into the bay, are losing their color and yellowing.
CULTURE / Film
Jan 27, 2001

Some guys have all the luck

Here's a strange thing. All our lives, movies have taught us that for love relationships to happen, men must be tall and smooth-skinned and lookgreat in Levi's (let's not even think about how women must be). Yet the very people responsible for generating the myth are often polar opposites of the characters...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 27, 2001

GOP keeps its faith in the Confederacy

President George W. Bush's nominee for attorney general, John Ashcroft, must wonder why he's gotten so much heat for comments he made about the Confederacy. After all, in the ultra-conservative circles he frequents, there's nothing taboo about his unreconstructed opinions -- even his likely future boss...
JAPAN
Jan 27, 2001

Police announce date club crackdown

In an effort to crack down on telephone dating clubs that enable users to engage in sex with minors and child prostitution, the National Police Agency is planning to submit a bill to revise a law controlling the adult entertainment business, NPA officials said.
BUSINESS
Jan 27, 2001

Foreigners net buyers for fourth week

Foreign investors were net buyers of Japanese stocks for the fourth straight week last week, with their buying excess hitting the highest level in more than a year.
BUSINESS
Jan 27, 2001

Tokyo Mutual to receive 30 billion yen in capital aid

Mid-tier insurer Tokyo Mutual Life Insurance Co. will receive 30 billion yen worth of capital assistance from Daiwa Bank and other corporations at the end of March, Tokyo Mutual officials said Friday.
JAPAN
Jan 27, 2001

Council steps up disaster preparations

The government decided Friday to strengthen monitoring systems in preparation for the likelihood of major earthquakes, especially in the Tokai region, government officials said.
JAPAN
Jan 27, 2001

New Envoys

Yukio Takeuchi, former deputy vice minister for foreign policy, has been appointed Japanese ambassador to Indonesia, and Ryuichiro Yamazaki, former Foreign Ministry press secretary, will become the envoy to Vietnam, the Foreign Ministry said Friday.
SOCCER / World cup
Jan 27, 2001

JAWOC reaches decision on World Cup name game

Top officials of the Japanese World Cup Organizing Committee (JAWOC) confirmed on Friday that they will stick to their original plan and use the term "Japan-Korea" when referring to the 2002 World Cup in Japanese.
MORE SPORTS
Jan 27, 2001

NFL sets sights on Osaka for American Bowl in 2002

TAMPA, Fla. -- Tokyo is the only city in Japan that has hosted the American Bowl, seeing the NFL's preseason game a world-high 10 times. Now the NFL is likely to be heading to Osaka in 2002.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 27, 2001

Nothing new about U.S. boom-bust cycle

Fears that a bear market in the United States will dampen consumer spending and cause a recession are unfounded. This is not to say that the U.S. economy will not experience a slowdown. But when the recession comes, it will be for a different reason.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 27, 2001

Corruption in China: business as usual?

Hardly a week goes by in China now without some leader being executed or arraigned for corruption. And the level of the officials being charged and convicted (much the same thing in China) is rising.
BUSINESS
Jan 27, 2001

RCC adviser quits in debt scandal

Kohei Nakabo, adviser to Resolution and Collection Corp., has resigned and a senior managing director and four others of the debt-collection vehicle have been punished over an improper collection deal in 1998, RCC chief Akio Kioi said Friday.
JAPAN
Jan 27, 2001

South Korea wants more than token ties

Japan should be more reciprocative in efforts to solidify ties with South Korea, given the extent to which South Korean President Kim Dae Jung has pursued forward-looking bilateral relations, according to Seoul's ambassador to Japan, Choi Sang Yong.
BUSINESS
Jan 27, 2001

Uniqlo fears future with import curb

The president of Fast Retailing Co., which operates the Uniqlo clothing store chain, said Friday that the limiting of inexpensive clothing imports from China would weaken the company in the long term.
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Jan 27, 2001

The art of appreciating ceramics

In pottery, as with life, sometimes the most basic questions are the most important: Why is this so? Or, how did this happen? Or, what does this part mean?
BASEBALL / MLB
Jan 27, 2001

Deal near as union softens stance

The Japanese baseball players' union is moving to accept management's plan to add five regular-season games in the 2001 calendar, backing down on a threat to boycott part of the upcoming season in a worst-case scenario.
JAPAN
Jan 27, 2001

British sports shoes clue to killings in Setagaya

The person who murdered a family of four in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward in late December wore a British brand of sneakers manufactured in South Korea, police said Friday.

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