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Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jul 9, 2003

Popular nightclub a microcosm of pain, potential of deflation-beset Japan

Tokyo nightclub owner Sakura Masui is nowhere close to the modern-day geisha girl she appears to be, shuffling demurely in a purple kimono as she pours drinks and chats in hushed tones.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Jul 9, 2003

Goro Suzuki: Honored to live in his time

Wrapped in flickering candlelight, koto master Tamiko Asai spoke to the audience in a hushed voice:
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 6, 2003

For the visiting guests of honor

Togo Heihachiro, fleet admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy, dealt a huge blow to the Russian armed forces when he sent the czar's Baltic Fleet to the bottom of the Tsushima Strait in May 1905. It was a stunning victory for Japan in the Russo-Japanese war: A bamboo land had vanquished a Western power....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 5, 2003

A very English experience in intimate learning

"Welcome to Moor Cottage," declares Judith Godfrey, principal of the Manchester Language School, located in a quiet leafy suburb of the famed northern English city.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 2, 2003

Fugitive Fujimori plots comeback

Alberto Fujimori peers into his computer quietly plotting a return to power half a world away -- all but oblivious to being a wanted man who can't leave the confines of Japan for fear of arrest.
COMMENTARY
Jul 2, 2003

Pyongyang: keep the gloves on for now

LONDON -- There is no question that the anachronistic communist regime in North Korea threatens the peace in Northeast Asia. In the absence of good intelligence, however, it is difficult to estimate the extent of the threat. American intelligence on Iraq was faulty, and it is doubtful whether the CIA...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 1, 2003

Hong Kong strives to end SARS stigma

As the principal representative of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Tokyo, I am pleased to share the challenges and achievements of Hong Kong with our friends in Japan on the sixth anniversary of the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China.
EDITORIALS
Jun 30, 2003

Prepare for the next outbreak

The outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which has claimed the lives of more than 800 people around the world, appears to have subsided. No new cases have been reported in mainland China, the epicenter of the disease, since June 11. Complete eradication will be difficult, though, and...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 29, 2003

Dishonesty in democracy

JAPAN'S DYSFUNCTIONAL DEMOCRACY: The Liberal Democratic Party and Structural Corruption, by Roger W. Bowen. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2003, 139 pp. $21.95 (paper). JAPAN'S FAILED REVOLUTION: Koizumi and the Politics of Reform, by Aurelia George Mulgan. Canberra: Asia Pacific Press, 2003, 139 pp. $36 (paper). During...
COMMENTARY
Jun 29, 2003

Humane results don't justify bad policy

WASHINGTON -- Never mind finding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, intones U.S. Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican: Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a bad man and "our war to liberate Iraq was right and just." Liberal pundit Nat Hentoff agrees, calling humanitarianism "the most compelling reason...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 29, 2003

The poetry and power of rock 'n' roll

For an artist as personal as Patti Smith, who once told an interviewer that it wasn't difficult to leave "the limelight and the applause" at the height of her popularity as a rock singer to become a full-time wife and mother, she certainly seems to derive a great deal of spiritual sustenance from direct...
COMMENTARY
Jun 28, 2003

Appeasers selling India short

NEW DELHI -- Belgian scholar Pierre Ryckmans coined the phrase the "100 percenters" to describe Beijing's international fans who support whatever China says 100 percent. Publishing under the pen name Simon Leys, Ryckmans compiled the statements of these toadies in defense of Chinese actions, including...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Jun 27, 2003

Prepare for lift-off: destination, the stars

Having spent the best part of two decades prowling Roppongi at street level, my first visit to the Roppongi Hills Club felt like an out-of-body experience. Hovering an awesome 51 floors above the network of increasingly seedy bars below, my spirit could not help but feel elevated. The club is so far...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 26, 2003

U.S.-EU axis of divergence

LONDON -- When the war in Iraq ended, politicians, diplomats and commentators in Europe stressed the need to repair the rift that had grown up between the United States and countries led by France and Germany, which had opposed the invasion. There was a general anticipation that relations would revert...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 25, 2003

An all-star cast -- but if only they'd let 'Hamlet' be

As the Beckham typhoon swept through Japan last week, so Japan's theater world was taken by storm by its biggest event of the year to date.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 25, 2003

Hu recasting China's foreign policy

SINGAPORE -- China's new president, Hu Jintao, appears to be remaking his country's foreign policy. Taking over in mid-March after the 16th Communist Party Congress, Hu was immediately plunged into one of China's biggest crises in modern times, the battle against severe acute respiratory syndrome.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 22, 2003

Evil war crims had it cushy

From behind a wooden lectern in Princeton University's Department of East Asian Studies last month, 85-year-old Tokio Tobita, a Japanese World War II veteran and convicted war criminal who served 10 years in Sugamo Prison, surveyed the intently focused faces of scholars, artists, students, American war...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 22, 2003

Singing the praises of soy

The telephone rang, and food-culture historian Hisao Nagayama, an advocate of the Japanese soy bean diet, excused himself from the interview and left his seat to take the call.
EDITORIALS
Jun 15, 2003

Trust in tatters

We've known all along we shouldn't believe everything we read in the newspapers, but this is getting ridiculous. First came the double blow to the credibility of the New York Times -- America's oft-proclaimed "paper of record" -- by disgraced reporters Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Jun 15, 2003

Life, in 22 million forms, in a bottle

Goggling out of its jar with dead, bulbous eyes, stained a ghastly yellow by its embalming alcohol, is a mutated octopus. Just behind it is another octopus, also in a jar. To its left is a bottled shoal of sea bass.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 15, 2003

A second wind for a giant of brass bands

Alfred Reed is the most frequently performed composer and arranger of music for wind bands and orchestras in the world -- and he's enormously popular here in Japan. The Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra alone has recorded no less than 18 CDs of his compositions.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Jun 14, 2003

Champions League to become more defensive with new format

LONDON -- The season has ground to a halt even though David Beckham's traveling circus is still touring the world, but it is time to look back on what we have learned from 2002-2003.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Jun 12, 2003

"Ned Mouse Breaks Away," "The Devil's Toenail"

"Ned Mouse Breaks Away," Tim Wynne-Jones, Groundwood Books; 2003; 192 pp. If you were caught playing with your spinach -- or worse, using long, stringy bits of it to write "I hate what Mom makes me eat" -- what would happen? You'd probably get grounded for a few days, right? But imagine if you got locked...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 10, 2003

My mother, the terrorist and other successful families

An old saying in Japanese goes, "Oya no hikari wa nanahikari," literally, "A parent's light is [as good as] seven lights." In other words, children who play their cards right can bask in the glow of their parent's fame.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 8, 2003

Empowered by consumerism

THE NEW JAPANESE WOMAN: Modernity, Media, and Women in Interwar Japan, by Barbara Sato. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003, 241 pp., $19.95 (paper). Barbara Sato's excellent analysis of changes in gender discourse and women's identity in the 1920s recasts the landscape of 20th-century women's...
COMMENTARY
Jun 7, 2003

Do G8 summits have value?

LONDON — The Group of Eight summit in Evian, France, cost a great deal in terms of time, effort and money. Was it worth it? Critics argue that nothing worthwhile emerged from the summit, that the communiques that had been drafted in advance were generally platitudinous and flatulent.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past