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Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 5, 2002

Accident at nuclear waste incinerator exposes worker to carbon-14 soot

OSAKA -- The exhaust pipe of a nuclear waste incinerator in Kawachinagano, Osaka Prefecture, ruptured Thursday, exposing a female worker to a small amount of soot, police said.
BUSINESS
Apr 2, 2002

'Tankan' report shows gloom lifting among big manufacturers

The decline in corporate sentiment among large manufacturers slowed for the first time in five quarters but remains weak overall, according to the Bank of Japan's quarterly "tankan" survey released Monday.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 1, 2002

The role of nuclear weapons is deterrence

How do we justify the paradox of using a weapon of mass destruction to stop others from acquiring them?
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Mar 31, 2002

Everything you need to know: Shin-chan's still in kindergarten

One cultural export that Japan does very well is animation, as evidenced by the fact that the Japanese word anime describes its own special category overseas. But while old reruns of "Astro Boy" are still shown in the West, "Crayon Shin-chan" probably never will be.
LIFE / Food & Drink / VINELAND
Mar 24, 2002

Let your taste buds do the browsing

At some point, it happens to all of us. You stand in front of the wine shelves and stare at the labels. You struggle to remember the last great vintage in the Rhone Valley, Rioja or Tuscany. You see the name of a winery you've liked in the past, but can't recall if it was the Syrah or the Zinfandel (it...
COMMENTARY
Mar 19, 2002

Class struggle joins Marx in the dustbin

HONG KONG -- Last Wednesday, a top official declared that, as a result of the market economy, "people's jobs and status keep changing" in China today, and there are "differences and contradictions between communities, between industries and between regions." These remarks by Li Ruihuan, China's fourth-ranking...
BUSINESS
Mar 9, 2002

S&P sees little impact from U.S. tariffs

Standard & Poor's Corp. said Friday the U.S. government's decision to place tariffs on steel imports will not immediately affect the agency's ratings on Japanese steelmakers.
BUSINESS
Mar 2, 2002

Household spending up 0.2%

Spending by wage-earning households increased by an inflation-adjusted 0.2 percent in January from a year earlier, following a 4.4 percent decline in December, the government said Friday.
BUSINESS
Feb 28, 2002

Wholesale, retail sales slide again

Combined sales by Japan's wholesalers and retailers dropped 5.4 percent from a year before in January, marking a 12th consecutive monthly decline, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said Wednesday.
COMMUNITY
Feb 24, 2002

No end to stress in modern Japan

Thirty-year-old Hiroko Sato was having her hair done, just as she had every month for the past several years, when suddenly she began to feel ill. First, she felt dizzy, then nauseous, then her hands started to go numb. She tried to shrug it off, but when she rose from her chair, she fainted.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 24, 2002

Moral absolutism on trial

ONE MAN'S JUSTICE, by Akira Yoshimura, translated by Mark Ealey. New York, San Diego and London: Harcourt, 2001, 276 pp., $23 (cloth) In every society, even the most apparently open-minded, there are times when some questions become taboo. In the United States right now, such questions include anything...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 16, 2002

Towels, tea & sympathy under CLAIR umbrella

I have arranged to meet Shingo Ishida, a program coordinator in the Guidance and Counseling Division of the JET Program Management Department in the Council of Local Authorities for International Relations. (Gulp, what a mouthful!) But after colleague Nicola Chilton -- working in a similar capacity under...
JAPAN
Feb 15, 2002

Arrests of rightists increase by 25%

Police arrested or punished 1,982 members of rightist groups nationwide last year, an increase of 398, or 25 percent, from the year before, the National Police Agency said Thursday.
LIFE / Digital / NAME OF THE GAME
Feb 14, 2002

Utah host to more than Olympics

With the 2002 Winter Olympics happening in Salt Lake City, the world will recognize that Utah is America's greatest mecca for skiing. But Utah is also an exporter of video games.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 9, 2002

Indian director blasts the bomb

While many Indian people greeted the nuclear tests conducted by New Delhi in 1998 with enthusiasm, one Indian film director claims that nationalist fervor has blinded the Indian public toward the hideous potential of nuclear weapons.
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.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 6, 2002

The Japa-Rican Dream

NEW YORK -- From a New Yorker's point of view, young Japanese actor Masayasu Nakanishi definitely has chutzpah. How many other people would go out of their way to flash their dreams and frustrations in public, especially when the defeats equal or outnumber the successes?
BUSINESS
Feb 2, 2002

Sales of new vehicles decreased 2.6% in January

January sales of new motor vehicles fell 2.6 percent from a year earlier to 248,489, down for the fifth consecutive month, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said Friday.
BUSINESS
Jan 31, 2002

Electronics production posts record fall for '01

The combined value of domestic electronics equipment production in 2001 is estimated to have fallen 15.3 percent from the previous year to 22.16 trillion yen, marking a record year-on-year decline, the Japan Electronics & Information Technology Industries Association said Wednesday.
BUSINESS
Jan 31, 2002

Crisis fears grow as crunch time for banks nears

A recent nationwide flurry of collapsing credit unions and "shinkin" credit associations was accompanied by a total lack of panic.
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 25, 2002

Toshima eyes tax on nuisance bikes, studio flats

Toshima Ward in Tokyo is planning to introduce the nation's first taxes on studio apartments and on bicycles parked in an obstructive manner near train stations, according to Toshima Mayor Yukio Takano.
COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE
Jan 24, 2002

A case for campaign finance reform

WASHINGTON -- Controversy is raging about the Enron collapse. Is it a political story? Is it a criminal story? Is it a business story? Is it a story about personalities? The Enron story is all three. The real question is which category is the most important. and that all depends on your perspective....
JAPAN
Jan 23, 2002

Police investigations hit record high; solutions fall

The number of criminal investigations in Japan hit a record-high 2.74 million in 2001, up 12 percent from the year before, while the resolution rate fell to a record-low 19.8 percent, down 3.8 percentage points, according to a National Police Agency survey released Monday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 23, 2002

Bygone grandeur revisited

Museums are usually places for looking at things in, not places to look at themselves. Some, though -- like Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York -- are works of art in their own right, and the Teien Art Museum in Shirokanedai, Tokyo, falls squarely into that category.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 23, 2002

Revamped MOMAT opens with unfinished business

With "The Unfinished Century," its first exhibition since its renovation, the Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, offers a comprehensive selection of works spanning the entire 20th century. The museum, and not only its exhibits, has become more comprehensive, too -- its improved facilities including a digital...
COMMUNITY
Jan 20, 2002

Japan's homogeneous diversity

More than one in 100 people residing in Japan is a foreign national -- but not all of them are immigrants or expatriates from overseas. Koreans are the largest foreign ethnic group in Japan, numbering some 635,269 persons (or 37.7 percent) of a foreign population put at around 1.7 million. Many are the...
JAPAN
Jan 15, 2002

Omron adds cat to robot pet population

A lifelike robot cat closes its eyes and meows after a young boy rubs the acrylic fur on its chin at a department store in Tokyo.

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