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JAPAN
Jan 12, 2000

Farm official offers to resign over co-op bribes

An official of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has tendered his resignation for receiving favors from a cooperative association in Kagawa Prefecture, ministry officials said. Tsuguo Joko, an assistant division head at the Agricultural Structure Improvement Bureau, offered to quit...
JAPAN
Jan 12, 2000

Austrian ambassador aims for mature ties

Austria's new ambassador to Japan, Hans Dietmar Schweisgut, said Wednesday he hopes to work for a more matured partnership between his country and Japan, which last year marked the 130th anniversary of bilateral relations. In order to expand ties, the two countries will have to develop more mutual trade...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jan 12, 2000

We have a future

Another megamerger, another Internet world-eating conglomerate emerges. Apart from its size, the AOL-Time/Warner deal is a big deal: The marriage of AOL and Time Warner matters (if it goes throtwo reasons. First, it combines one of the biggest Net presences with a broadband delivery systefinally makes...
JAPAN
Jan 12, 2000

Kanematsu to ax lump-sum retirement, hike wages

Kanematsu Textile Corp., a subsidiary of trading house Kanematsu Corp., has abolished its system of providing employees with a lump sum payment at retirement and will raise monthly wages instead, company officials said Wednesday. The move was in response to requests from employees and a trend in the...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Jan 12, 2000

Win some, lose some

Like many of our readers, I continue to miss Gary Larson's The Far Side cartoons. Now I have 366 of them in a millennium collection brought up to date with color and appropriate historic dates which the publisher, Andrews McMeel of Kansas City, calls "a refreshingly irreverent retrospective of the last...
JAPAN
Jan 12, 2000

Employers call for shake up by sharing jobs, cutting wages

As a way of maintaining the current level of employment as well as creating new jobs, the Japan Federation of Employers' Associations (Nikkeiren) proposed that wages be reduced and job-sharing be adopted by more firms in its annual report released Wednesday. The business organization's report is regarded...
EDITORIALS
Jan 11, 2000

Declaring war against AIDS

It is reckoned that the AIDS scourge began about 20 years ago. In the two decades since then, it has claimed more than 16 million lives. The World Health Organization estimates that 33.6 million people, 1.2 million of them children, live with the HIV infection that is the disease's precursor. The speed...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 11, 2000

End the dangerous illusions

In this final year of the 20th century, there are several key lessons we should learn from this turbulent period. First, as a Japanese I want to point out that Japan modernized with remarkable success in the first half of the century. Following its victory in the Russo-JapaneseWar (1904-05), the nation...
BUSINESS
Jan 11, 2000

Minicar sales hit record high in '99

Sales of new minicars in 1999 jumped 21.2 percent from the previous year to 1.88 million units, the highest annual figure since the Japan Mini Vehicles Association started taking statistics in 1967, the association said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Jan 11, 2000

'Unfair' decorations system under review

The government and the Liberal Democratic Party are promoting a review of the decoration system for the first time in 36 years. At the end of last year, Shizuka Kamei, chairman of the LDP's Policy Affairs Research Council, called for reforming the system for granting prestigious decorations to civil...
JAPAN
Jan 11, 2000

LDP downplays Osaka rift, backs Ota for governor

Top executives of the Liberal Democratic Party formally decided Tuesday to back a former trade ministry official for the upcoming gubernatorial election in Osaka, despite a rebellion from its Osaka chapter, which supports a different candidate. On Tuesday evening, LDP Secretary General Yoshiro Mori...
CULTURE / Music
Jan 11, 2000

Ani DiFranco's hard road leads her to a higher plane

Last year, the prolific Ani DiFranco released three albums. Any record company marketing executive would tell you that's more than the market could take. But then, DiFranco doesn't have to answer to any record company. She owns her own.
JAPAN
Jan 11, 2000

Ring funneling cash to China busted

OSAKA -- Police here recently announced that after a yearlong investigation, they have broken up an underground banking operation that funneled an estimated 20 billion yen a year to China through an elaborate network of falsified accounts in Tokyo and Osaka.
JAPAN
Jan 11, 2000

Allstate withdraws Japanese operations

Allstate Property and Casualty Insurance Japan Co., a Japanese subsidiary of a major U.S. insurance group, said Tuesday it will withdraw from operations here -- only nine months after its launch. The move follows the group's review of its business strategy late last year, officials said, adding that...
JAPAN
Jan 11, 2000

Yachiyo Bank to take over failed Kokumin

Yachiyo Bank and state-appointed administrators of Kokumin Bank announced Tuesday that the two parties have reached a basic agreement to have Yachiyo take over the failed second-tier regional bank. Of the five second-tier regional banks that went under after the financial reconstruction law took effect...
JAPAN
Jan 11, 2000

Aum will leave when ready, Joyu says

YOKOHAMA -- People living near a Yokohama condominium containing an Aum Shinrikyo office demanded Tuesday that former cult spokesman Fumihiro Joyu and other followers immediately leave the area. The written demand by a town council, shop owners and local residents came after the neighborhood was thrown...
EDITORIALS
Jan 10, 2000

School discipline applies to all

Media reports of the increasing number of violent incidents in the nation's public elementary and junior and senior high schools have made "classroom collapse" part of the everyday language. The reports nearly always refer to these incidents as examples of a breakdown in school discipline, but "discipline"...
COMMENTARY
Jan 10, 2000

Samurai values to the rescue

The biggest challenge for Japan as it greets the new millennium is implementing drastic political, economic and educational reforms, comparable to those carried out in the Meiji Restoration and after the end of World War II. Plans must include major fiscal reform, restructuring of the banking system,...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 10, 2000

How to level the business playing field

CRISIS AND OPPORTUNITY IN A CHANGING JAPAN, by William R. Farrell, with a foreward by Walter F. Mondale. Westport/London: Quorum Books, 1999, 275 pp., $60 (cloth). It's the Black Ships, round II. JETRO reports that foreign direct investment into Japan leaped 89.4 percent last year, topping $10 billion...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 10, 2000

Getting under a tattooist's skin

TATTOOING THE INVISIBLE MAN: Bodies of Work, 1955-1999, by Don Ed Hardy. edited by Francesca Passalacqua. Santa Monica, Calif.: Smart Art Press/Hardy Marks Publications, 1999, 300 pp., profusely illustrated, color and b/w, $90. In 1972 Don Ed Hardy, already a tattoo artist of note, made his first trip...
JAPAN
Jan 10, 2000

Make 'Rebuilding Confidence' the government slogan for 2000

Last year a series of mishaps shook our faith in various things we have grown to trust over the years, from the H-II rocket failure and the crumbling tunnels of our shinkansen lines to the nuclearcriticality accident in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture.
JAPAN
Jan 10, 2000

Vietnamese set up residents' network

Some 60 exchange students and former refugees from Vietnam met in Kawasaki on Monday to launch the first nationwide network of Vietnamese residents of Japan. Members of 10 different support groups for people who fled to Japan after the Vietnam War ended in 1975 marked the start of the Network of Vietnamese...
JAPAN
Jan 10, 2000

Ex-MITI councilor to stand in Osaka poll

OSAKA -- Ota, formerly a senior trade ministry official, announced Monday that she will run in the Osaka gubernatorial election with the backing of several parties. The election, to be held Feb. 6, is to fill the post left vacant by Gov. "Knock" Yokoyama, who resigned after being indicted for sexually...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 10, 2000

Asia's forgotten civilization

THE MONS: A Civilization of Southeast Asia, by Emmanuel Guillon, translated and edited by James V. Di Crocco. Bangkok: Siam Society, 1999, 900 baht. Every student of Southeast Asian culture is bound to become aware of a kind of empty chapter that is nevertheless pregnant with meaning and substance....
JAPAN
Jan 10, 2000

Youth likely to vote despite distrust

Many new adults polled Monday morning by The Japan Times said they would exercise their just-acquired right to vote in this year's Lower House election, but their comments also revealed mixed feelings toward politics and even outright distrust in lawmakers. "I'm going (to the polls), though I don't...
JAPAN
Jan 10, 2000

Police bust Chinese money-laundering ring

Staff writer OSAKA -- Police here recently announced that after a yearlong investigation, they have broken up an underground banking operation that funneled an estimated 20 billion yen a year to China through an elaborate network of falsified accounts in Tokyo and Osaka. Since early 1999, 10 Chinese...
ENVIRONMENT
Jan 10, 2000

This is last chance to get straight with environment -- UNEP report

This is last chance to get straight with environment -- UNEP report ft,b For those of us who get a kick out of odometers hitting big round numbers, this is it, a new century. Environmentally speaking, though, 100-year blocks of time are almost irrelevant.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 10, 2000

High stakes in the war on terrorism

Special to The Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jan 10, 2000

DaimlerChrysler may purchase Nissan Diesel

DETROIT -- Robert Eaton, cochairman of DaimlerChrysler AG, expressed interest Sunday in purchasing embattled truck maker Nissan Diesel Motor Co. -- as long as terms of acquisition are acceptable.
JAPAN
Jan 10, 2000

Ministry may tax fuel efficiency to fix road-funding burden

The Construction Ministry plans to overhaul the way road construction is funded to reduce the taxation disparities brought about by the rise of alternate-fuel and energy-efficient cars, it was learned Monday. Reforms under consideration include a tax on fuel efficiency, which would affect all vehicles,...

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