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COMMENTARY
Sep 6, 2004

Blame it on the cell phones

The continuing doldrums in the Japanese economy began with a slowdown more than 13 years ago -- in May 1991. The slump stems from sluggish consumer spending, which accounts for 60 percent of the gross national product, and bad loans plaguing Japanese commercial banks. Let's consider the reasons for sluggish...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 5, 2004

Traveling with eyes wide open

SUN AFTER DARK: Flights into the Foreign, by Pico Iyer. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004, 224 pp., $22.95 (cloth). "They say travel broadens the mind," says G.K. Chesterton, adding, "but you must have the mind." Further, that mind must be both attentive and reflective, independent and philosophical, and...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 4, 2004

Howard, Latham doff gloves

SYDNEY -- Australians had hardly stopped cheering their Olympic champions in Athens -- the highest medal winners in the world on a national per capita basis -- before a general election was announced and the media again went wild.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Sep 3, 2004

Signing of Rooney a big gamble for Manchester United

LONDON -- Incredible.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Sep 2, 2004

Ravens, shamans and 'shrooms

In 1988 I made a documentary with the Hokkaido Broadcasting Co. We filmed on the Kamchatka Peninsula in northeast Siberia, in Alaska and in Japan. Our main theme was the raven and the many raven legends that link the peoples of the Pacific Rim.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 1, 2004

Flickers in the dead of night

Kaidan Shinmimibukuro Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5) Director: See review Running time: 92 minutes Language: Japanese Currently showing [See Japan Times movie listings] The older I get, the harder I am to scare -- with horror movies at least. After a certain age, real life, including medical...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Sep 1, 2004

Toothless SESC rues failure to protect investors

Teruko Noda, a commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission, has a cabinet full of letters, mostly telling the same story: brokers who allegedly lied and individual investors who lost their life savings.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 1, 2004

Shaking it up on Sado

SADO ISLAND, Niigata Pref. -- Step one: right leg forward, left leg back.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 1, 2004

Bringing the outsiders onto the stage

"Who are we?" and who are "the others"? And how should "we" associate with "them"? Written in 1996 by Hideki Noda, Japan's leading contemporary dramatist, this is one of the central themes of "Red Demon." It premiered in Japan with English actor Angus Burnett in the title role, before being staged in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 1, 2004

Kaleidoscope of colorful fashion

Viktor & Rolf are internationally renowned as the Gilbert and George of the fashion world for presenting conceptual work as sophisticated art performances in haute couture and pret-a-porter shows. Take their installation of their Spring/Summer 1996 collection in a contemporary art gallery in Paris October...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 31, 2004

Scholar denies peeping up skirt

A noted economist accused of trying to look up a high school student's skirt in April reiterated his innocence Monday in his first appearance before the media since the alleged incident occurred.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Aug 31, 2004

Air travel, kids stuff and wills

Air travel R.M. has a friend who wants to come and visit Japan, but he needs to use a portable oxygen tank from time to time.
COMMENTARY
Aug 31, 2004

Feeling the enemy's breath

LONDON -- The Americans are going home. Or, to be more precise, after more than 60 years, 70,000 American military personnel are to be gradually withdrawn from the European arena. Since the present number of American troops under "European command" is 116,000, this will leave in the longer term between...
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Aug 30, 2004

Financial-sector shakedown afoot

Amid close scrutiny both in Japan and abroad, the integration of Japan's major banks is progressing at a rapid pace -- and triggering unprecedented legal battles in the process.
COMMENTARY
Aug 30, 2004

Cooler summer for French intramurals

PARIS -- "Chaotic all over the territory," warned a French weather forecast recently. This was not, however, the remake, feared by so many, of the August 2003 heat wave, which contributed to 15,000 extra deaths that month.
COMMENTARY
Aug 30, 2004

They came, they saw, they pillaged Asia

LOS ANGELES -- Financial authorities are aghast over the latest near-death international financial collision. It involved a lightening-fast dumping earlier this month of nearly $14 billion in securities. The perpetrator was Citigroup, operating out of London.
JAPAN
Aug 29, 2004

Workers' health getting worse

A record 47.3 percent of salaried workers showed abnormal readings in their health checkups last year, according to a government survey released Saturday.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 29, 2004

Tenuous but important movie links

THE CINEMA OF JAPAN AND KOREA, edited by Justin Bowyer, preface by Jinhee Choi. London: Wallflower Press, 2004, 258 pp., 24 b/w photos, £45.00 (cloth), £16.99 (paper). The linking of two national cinemas is, as the editor of this interesting collection of essays points out, problematic. Geographical...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Aug 28, 2004

David Springett

CHESTER, England -- In the nave of the famed cathedral in Chester, a Londoner speaking fluent Japanese leads a party of Japanese tourists. He tells them that there may have been a Christian church on this site nearly 2,000 years ago, and that there certainly was one 1,000 years ago. A Benedictine abbey...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 28, 2004

36-year death row inmate loses appeal for retrial

The Tokyo High Court on Friday rejected a retrial plea lodged by a former professional boxer who has been on death row for 36 years over the 1966 murder of a family of four in Shizuoka Prefecture.
JAPAN
Aug 27, 2004

Bigotry hounds former Hansen's patients

At first, Japanese victims of Hansen's disease were jubilant after a court fined a hot spring resort that turned them away last year. Then came the hate mail.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / NAME OF THE GAME
Aug 26, 2004

Shedding light on Doom 3

There's a slight glitch in the instantaneous transport system that Union Aerospace Corp. (UAC) is developing in its Mars labs -- it opens the portals of Hell.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 25, 2004

No easy answers from Kore-eda

Directors who have been on the PR circuit long enough often have their answers ready before the interviewer's questions are halfway out of his mouth. Not Hirokazu Kore-eda. Despite the dozens of interviews he's given since "Nobody Knows (Daremo Shiranai)" screened in competition at this year's Cannes...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 25, 2004

While Mom was away

Nobody Knows Rating: * * * * (out of 5) Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda Running time: 141 minutes Language: Japanese Currently showing [See Japan Times movie listings]
EDITORIALS
Aug 25, 2004

China marks Deng's centenary

China this week celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of Deng Xiaoping, the man most responsible for setting China on the path toward growth, development and its re-emergence as a real power in Asia and the world. Deng died seven years ago, but his stature has only grown in the intervening years....
BUSINESS
Aug 25, 2004

Koizumi blasts postal reform foes

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi expressed strong dissatisfaction Tuesday over continued opposition within his Liberal Democratic Party to privatizing postal services, saying it's "a done deal."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 24, 2004

Pension system a riddle wrapped in an enigma

Help, police! For foreigners staying in Japan for more than three and less than 25 years, there is only one word for the Japanese pension system -- ROBBERY! -- Bhupesh

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?