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COMMENTARY / World
Feb 17, 2002

Threats to U.N. 'legitimacy'

The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush began with a clear and pronounced bent toward unilateralism in foreign policy. Japan felt this most keenly with respect to the rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, but others also experienced it with regard to arms control treaties and...
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Feb 17, 2002

The heart of the jungle

While the ink on this page was still drying, several dozen bankers were careening toward the hangover of a lifetime. Of course, a Sunday hangover is nothing unusual for the average salaried employee, but for these chosen few -- these fast-track Masters of the Universe with brain cells aplenty to burn,...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 17, 2002

Was she used -- or were Makiko's tears deemed too dangerous?

The sixth Press and Human Rights Committee Conference, held at the end of January by the Asahi Shimbun, focused on the problem of gender discrimination in the media. In a full-page feature promoting the event in the Feb. 10 issue of the newspaper, three participants started out by blasting Prime Minister...
COMMUNITY
Feb 17, 2002

Waseda and Keio: rivals to the core

It was Oct. 22, 1933, at the Jingu Baseball Stadium. The winner of the day's So-Kei (Waseda vs. Keio) match would lift the trophy for the year.
JAPAN
Feb 16, 2002

Antiwar campaigners to donate documents to Vietnamese museum

Members of a Japanese group that campaigned against the Vietnam War will visit Ho Chi Minh City later this month to donate materials and documents detailing their activities in the 1960s and 1970s to the state-run War Remnants Museum.
BUSINESS
Feb 15, 2002

Investors swap stocks, MMFs for gold

Japanese individual investors are increasingly shying away from financial products with potential risk, especially after the sudden collapse of U.S. energy giant Enron Corp. dealt a severe blow to popular money management funds.
LIFE / Lifestyle / LEARNING BY HEART
Feb 15, 2002

Shitamachi schoolmates still together at 70

What is the secret of lifelong friendships that form in elementary school? I would never have thought to ask myself that question until my father-in-law announced he wouldn't be home for Sunday's family dinner because he was attending a party. Though he put it quite casually, the amazing thing to me...
JAPAN
Feb 11, 2002

Shonan merger plan races clock, though some balk

With its gently arching coastline overlooking Enoshima Island in Sagami Bay and a distant view of Mount Fuji and the Hakone mountain range, the Shonan area in Kanagawa Prefecture triggers memories of songs and movies about the picturesque area.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Feb 10, 2002

TV sports trump freedom; public loses

MOSCOW -- There is no television broadcast in Russia anymore that is independent of the Russian government. Having applied the poisonous gas of legal niceties, the Kremlin has shut down the last stronghold of dissent, the vocal and opinionated TV-6. It was the coup de grace in Russian President Vladimir...
LIFE / Food & Drink / VINELAND
Feb 10, 2002

Uncork a bottle of pure passion

This Valentine's Day, ignore the boxes of waxy, stale chocolate at the supermarket. Give up on forcing rhymes into a bad love poem. Never mind the refrigerated roses from the florist, their heads already on the verge of drooping.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 9, 2002

Hire women, aged before foreigners, expert says

While Japan's unemployment rate is hovering at its worst level in the postwar era and manufacturers are shifting production abroad for cheaper labor, foreign workers seem to be enjoying their share of demand.
MORE SPORTS
Feb 8, 2002

Arimori strides for success in life after marathon

Winning an Olympic medal, you would think, would be the greatest honor an athlete can achieve.
JAPAN
Feb 8, 2002

Are cell phones becoming too disruptive?

Masahito Tagami spent some 900,000 yen on a relay antenna system when he opened an "izakaya" restaurant in the basement of a building in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, last April, so that customers could use their mobile phones.
LIFE / Lifestyle / MATTER OF COURSE
Feb 8, 2002

It's time to say: Let's talk about sex, babies

In all my years of studying Japanese, I never learned the word I need right now. How do you say "nocturnal emission"? I need to know because my 10-year-old son is starting sex education at school, and I haven't told him that part of "the facts of life." His Japanese is pretty good, but I think he'll...
EDITORIALS
Feb 6, 2002

The only viable choice

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's policy speech to the Diet on Monday could not have come at a worse time. The week before, he had invited public anger by firing Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, the most popular member of his Cabinet and the staunchest supporter of his reform plans. It was an "agonizing...
CULTURE / Music / J-POPSICLE
Feb 6, 2002

We've got high expectations

A while back, I was whingeing about how Japan needs a music awards show that has more popular input. Well, the good folks at MTV Japan have done something to help remedy that problem. On May 24, it will host the first-ever MTV Video Music Awards Japan.
EDITORIALS
Feb 4, 2002

Doing right by Doha

Without a lot of fanfare, trade negotiators formally began the Doha Round of trade talks last week in Geneva. That the talks are being held at all is a victory; the original attempt to launch them unleashed "the battle of Seattle," when antiglobalism protesters turned that peaceful city into a riot zone....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 3, 2002

Sue Sumii looks back on a life well spent

MY LIFE: Living, Loving and Fighting, by Sue Sumii; interviews by Masuda Reiko, translated by the Ashi Translation Society, with an introduction by Livia Monnet. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 108 pp., $29.95 (paper) Sue Sumii (1902-97) is remembered for the multipart...
COMMENTARY
Jan 30, 2002

Chinese, when convenient

HONG KONG -- In an unusual move, China in recent weeks twice denied visa applications by a group of South Korean lawmakers. Relations between China and South Korea have been good in recent years, so it is strange that Korean legislators who wish to visit China should be denied the chance to do so.
JAPAN
Jan 29, 2002

Flood of bogus bills blamed on foreign mob

More than 900 counterfeit 10,000 yen bills with finely crafted watermarks have been found in Tokyo, Osaka and Shizuoka prefectures since the beginning of 2002, and investigators suspect an overseas criminal organization.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Jan 29, 2002

Learning Spanish under the volcanoes

Fancy learning Spanish? We're pleased to suggest four options.
COMMENTARY
Jan 28, 2002

Congress should do more than just spend

WASHINGTON -- With Congress back in session, economics is likely to come to the fore in Washington. President George W. Bush may be winning the war on terrorism, but congressional Democrats think they can recoup by blaming him for losing the surplus. This party of big spenders is ill-equipped to take...
JAPAN
Jan 28, 2002

Mail order firm suspected of failing to repay members

Members of a Tokyo-based mail order firm have accused it of failing to refund their investments, industry sources said Sunday.
JAPAN
Jan 27, 2002

Grandson of Jews saved from Nazis by Sugihara meets diplomat's relatives

The grandson of one of the 6,000 Jewish people saved by a Japanese embassy official during World War II met with the diplomat's relatives in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward on Saturday.
COMMUNITY
Jan 27, 2002

Slimming products make weighty claims

Some people -- generally women -- will do anything to lose weight. Slimming products range from the bizarre to the outright absurd -- from balloons that claim to raise your body temperature and burn calories when you inflate them, to rubber suction cups that promise to shrink that double chin or expunge...
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jan 27, 2002

The genuine Korea Town article

Times are changing in Korea Town. Those couple of kimchi-scented blocks just north of Kabukicho are still the best place in the city to find home-style cooking as spiced up as you'd get on the Korean Peninsula. But, slowly, the inexorable process of gentrification is under way.
COMMUNITY
Jan 27, 2002

Eating disorders claiming ever younger victims

Aya Omiya was only 12 years old when she was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. She was 17 when she died.
COMMUNITY
Jan 26, 2002

Still passing on her father's ideals of democracy

Yukika Soma can't see very well these days. Her eyesight is fine, she says; it's just she has trouble controlling her eyelids. She still comes into her Nagata-cho office three or four days a week at the Ozaki Yukio Memorial Foundation, named after her father, but nowadays a young assistant escorts her...

Longform

Sumadori Bar on Shibuya Ward's main Center Gai street targets young customers who prefer low-alcohol drinks or abstain altogether.
Rethinking that second drink: Japan’s Gen Z gets ‘sober curious’