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COMMUNITY
Mar 4, 2003

Japan gets keen on green for Paddy's Day party

The great, the good and the goths of trendy Harajuku are in for a shock on March 16, when the chic shopping district will be taken over by Tokyo's annual St. Patrick's Day Parade.
COMMENTARY
Feb 22, 2003

Best policy Seoul can buy?

HONOLULU -- The unmaking of a hero is never pretty, but the fall of South Korean President Kim Dae Jung has been especially ugly. The statesman leaves behind a shredded legacy and he, like many of his predecessors, is but one step ahead of the prosecutor. Even his Nobel Peace Price has been tarnished:...
COMMENTARY
Feb 18, 2003

Japan must shift to regional autonomy

Elections are in Japan's forecast for this year -- nationwide local elections in April, the contest for the Liberal Democratic Party presidency in October and perhaps a general election for the House of Representative sometime in between -- with a strong possibility of political turbulence along the...
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.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 12, 2003

Facing economic facts, even if it hurts

STRADDLING ECONOMICS AND POLITICS: Cross-Cutting Issues in Asia, the United States, and the Global Economy, by Charles Wolf Jr. Santa Monica, CA.: Rand, 2002, 210 pp., $20 (paper) You have to give Charles Wolf credit. It takes courage to reprint articles when some of the predictions included are flat-out...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 11, 2003

Prepared to stand by his principles, pay the price

Francis Higashiki is on the move, passing through Tokyo's Hamamatsucho on his way to Haneda Airport. He works near Oita in Kyushu, in a home for 35 abused children. "After the war, orphanages were full of orphans. Now most children have parents, but sadly there is so much domestic violence."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 29, 2002

Koma Square -- a new years' tale by RK

1997-99 He woke to the sound of a prerecorded voice booming from the nationalists' minitruck rolling through their neighborhood, making the windows rattle. Shirtless on the tatami, his bare back pressed to the ribbed weave, he heard the voice as part of his dream and then part of the day, and then...
COMMENTARY / JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL ERA
Dec 2, 2002

Women's creativity waiting to be tapped

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- Several months ago, I mentioned I would be addressing the gender question in a future article. I received several letters urging me to do so. A couple of correspondents, however, argued that the question of women is a purely domestic affair and not relevant to the theme of "Japan...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Nov 23, 2002

Angela Bilbao de Infante

Next year, the International Ladies Benevolent Society will celebrate its 50th anniversary of nonstop, wholehearted, generous help to charitable organizations and people in need in Japan. A continuing, major fundraising event is the annual Christmas Fair. This year's chairwoman for the fair is Angela...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 22, 2002

Japanese movies eyed for makeover

With "The Ring," the horror film based on the 1998 Hideo Nakata hit "Ringu," sailing past the $100 million mark in the United States, remakes of Japanese and other Asian films are suddenly hot in Hollywood.
JAPAN
Nov 20, 2002

Cabinet OKs six-month extension of support for war on terror

The Cabinet on Tuesday approved a six-month extension of Japan's logistic support for antiterror operations led by the United States.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Nov 20, 2002

Sinead O'Connor: "Sean-Nos Nua"

Though she's done the occasional traditional Irish song as a guest on other people's records, Sinead O'Connor has never explored her country's musical heritage in depth. Now, after more than 10 years of trying to express her adolescent earth-mother iconoclasm, she gives up and goes the trad route with...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 7, 2002

Activist expelled by China returns home

OSAKA -- A Japanese NGO official who was detained in China last week returned to Japan on Wednesday after being expelled by Beijing.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 3, 2002

Bustling Chinatown's squeaky-clean world within

Even before you pass beneath one of the 10 ornamented gates marking the boundaries of Yokohama's Chinatown, you start picking up signals that you're about to cross into a different country.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 27, 2002

An unflinching look at the face of suffering

FEAR AND SANCTUARY: Burmese Refugees in Thailand, by Hazel J. Lang. Cornell Southeast Asia Publications: Ithaca, New York, 2002, 240 pp., $24 (paper) An army column enters a small farming village without warning. The soldiers have been taught that everyone there is a potential enemy. Should any villagers...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 20, 2002

A city with the world on its plates

It is highly unlikely that Commodore Perry or any other of his crew had epicurean tastes, but the arrival of the Black Ships in 1853 signaled the start of an influx to Japan of foreign -- specifically Western -- food. With the subsequent opening of treaty ports and the Meiji Era's heady days of "bunmei...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 13, 2002

Japanese will have babies when living is easy

In the middle of September, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry released a set of countermeasures to address the declining birthrate, which Chikara Sakaguchi -- the head of the ministry -- has said will "sink Japan" if it remains as low as it is.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / GARDENS FOR ALL
Oct 10, 2002

Nurturing nature in an urban sprawl

At a mere 374 meters high, Arima-Fuji in Hyogo Prefecture is hardly on a par with the Kanto peak whose name it shares, but its conical shape does bear a passing resemblance. Though it's almost all clothed with pleasent woodland, from the bare rocky areas near the summit there are good views of the surrounding...
BUSINESS
Sep 24, 2002

Madrid conference brings together key mortgage industry players

MADRID -- Changes in Japan's mortgage industry are likely to cause a spurt in mortgage lending and a great deal of price competition, ultimately leading to a shakeup in the the country's mortgage industry, according to Michael Lea, president of Countrywide International Consulting Services.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 20, 2002

Abductees' families kept in dark

North Korea gave Japan the dates eight of its abducted nationals died, but the Foreign Ministry withheld the information from the next of kin until it was reported in a newspaper, government officials said Thursday.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 18, 2002

Kim admits abductions

PYONGYANG -- Four of the 11 Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and '80s are alive but six others are dead, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi during their landmark talks on Tuesday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 18, 2002

Winner loses all in the games people play

Two eagerly anticipated German-directed productions of Shakespeare arrived in Tokyo last week, each the product of its director's extensive experience and deep deliberation on the play's contemporary relevance, and each given a polished reinterpretation as a result.
MORE SPORTS
Sep 17, 2002

Tired Greene ends sprint season on a low in Yokohama

YOKOHAMA -- After a 12-hour flight from Paris, Maurice Greene couldn't get to sleep until the early hours of Monday morning. And during warmups for the 100-meter race at the Super Track and Field Meet 2002 on Monday, the body of the world's second fastest man didn't react quite like normal.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 12, 2002

Kashmir polls could be step to dialogue

Elections to the Kashmir Assembly will be held from Sept. 16 to Oct. 8. The million-dollar question is, will they be meaningful and bring about peace in a state that has been a bone of contention since 1947, when the British colonial masters divided the subcontinent into India and Pakistan before leaving?...
COMMENTARY
Sep 12, 2002

Brave trip to settle the past

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's one-day visit to North Korea on Sept. 17 is likely to have a profound effect on the security situation in Northeast Asia. The two nations started normalization talks in 1991, but thus far no substantial progress has been made because of the alleged abduction of Japanese...
JAPAN
Sep 7, 2002

Watanuki to join G8 counterparts in Canada

Tamisuke Watanuki, speaker of the House of Representatives, left for Canada on Friday to attend the first meeting of lower house chairs from the Group of Eight industrial countries.
COMMENTARY / World / GUEST FORUM
Aug 31, 2002

Reactions to 9/11 as scary as the attacks

For my friend Azusa, it was supposed to be a long-waited vacation in New York City. Despite a big autumn typhoon, her Continental Air flight to Newark took off from Narita on time at 4 p.m. and she began to doze off, expecting a long flight to the East Coast as usual.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 31, 2002

Koizumi to visit Pyongyang Sept. 17

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will make a landmark one-day visit to Pyongyang Sept. 17 for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the government announced Friday.
EDITORIALS
Aug 23, 2002

Time to act quickly on aging

In about 13 years, when the generation born in the first baby-boom period immediately after World War II reaches old age, Japan will become a full-fledged aged society. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the elderly population aged 65 years or over will number 33 million and will...

Longform

Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.
The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers