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BUSINESS
Feb 6, 2003

Matsushita missed boat on camera phones: exec

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. missed its goal of capturing 25 percent of Japan's cellular phone market because of its late introduction of camera phones, the head of the company's mobile communications unit said. Panasonic brand cell phones finished 2002 with less than 20 percent of the domestic...
BUSINESS
Jan 18, 2003

Hazama to split into building, real estate companies Oct. 1

Struggling contractor Hazama Corp. released on Friday a three-year reconstruction plan under which it will split itself into two firms, while its president expressed a willingness to conduct management integration with other unspecified builders.
BUSINESS
Jan 16, 2003

Daiei to sell stakes in four hotels

Struggling supermarket chain Daiei Inc. said Wednesday it will sell four hotels to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. of the United States for 45.4 billion yen. It also said it is also considering selling Fukuoka Dome.
BUSINESS / ON MANAGEMENT
Nov 5, 2002

Dealing with staff who are making money on the side

This is a story about your most delightful headache. Or perhaps your company's Achilles' heel. Why is the spectrum so wide? Because we're talking about the inner drive that made America great, and its consequences when it manifests itself in inappropriate places.
Japan Times
JAPAN / BABY BUST
Sep 19, 2002

Birthrate suffers as women face unattractive choices

Mayumi Shinde, 40, has worked for seven years as a system engineer at a Tokyo firm, at one stage attaining a job capability assessment of S -- one special level higher than A, the normal top ranking.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 18, 2002

Trying to learn from failure suddenly all the rage

Isatsugu Sugahara, president of leading box-lunch caterer Tamagoya Co., runs his fingers across a stained, worn-out calendar, looking for a little circle he drew years ago. His fingers stop at May 12, 1982, the day his life changed forever.
JAPAN
Aug 27, 2002

Efforts afoot to protect whistle-blowers

OSAKA -- Recent years have seen more and more whistle-blowers come forward to expose corporate wrongdoing, often to their own personal career detriment.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 22, 2002

Green Cross chiefs' prison terms reduced

OSAKA -- The Osaka High Court on Wednesday reduced the sentences of two former presidents of the defunct Green Cross Corp., which sold HIV-tainted blood products in the 1980s, but rejected their appeal for suspended sentences.
JAPAN
Aug 21, 2002

NTT disconnects 'wangiri' caller

OSAKA -- NTT West Corp. on Tuesday suspended connection services to a company in Fukuoka that allegedly made "wangiri" phone calls in such massive numbers that it threatened to paralyze NTT's telephone networks, NTT West officials said.
JAPAN
Aug 10, 2002

Nippon Food Inc. Osaka unit raided

OSAKA -- Farm ministry officials on Friday searched Nippon Food Inc.'s Osaka unit, which was implicated in the defrauding of a state-run beef buyback program, ministry officials said.
BUSINESS
Jul 13, 2002

Matsushita to cut costs with transfer

OSAKA -- Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. will transfer 1,200 clerical and other employees to an office business subsidiary as it cuts further into labor costs, company officials said Friday.
BUSINESS
Jun 29, 2002

Nippon Housing Loan to pay for cooked books

OSAKA -- Auditors and executives of the now-defunct "jusen" mortgage lender Nippon Housing Loan Co. have agreed to pay former shareholders 20 million yen for falsifying debt figures, sources close to the case said Friday.
JAPAN / WEEKEND WISDOM
Jun 23, 2002

Scale model maker strives to keep high-tech rivals at bay

SHIZUOKA — Shunsaku Tamiya's great passion is trying to coax today's high-tech savvy kids into embracing the low-tech world of scale models.
JAPAN
Jun 22, 2002

Suzuki policy secretary arrested in bribe case

Prosecutors on Friday arrested the policy secretary of scandal-hit lawmaker Muneo Suzuki, who himself was recently arrested on suspicion of taking a bribe in 1998.
BUSINESS
May 29, 2002

Japan Telecom posts net losses of 66 billion yen

Struggling with ongoing restructuring efforts, Japan Telecom Co. on Tuesday reported net losses of 66 billion yen for the business year that ended in March. It was Japan Telecom's first net loss as a publicly traded company.
BUSINESS
May 28, 2002

Kumagai Gumi reports first profit in nine years

Kumagai Gumi Co. on Monday said it posted a net profit of 2.55 billion yen for the 2001 business year, the first time in nine years that black ink flowed onto its books.
JAPAN
May 22, 2002

Duskin admits using antioxidant for dumplings

OSAKA -- Duskin Co., which runs the Mister Donut chain in Japan, on Tuesday reported to the Osaka Prefectural Government on its use of an unauthorized antioxidant for producing dumplings, as was disclosed Monday.
JAPAN
May 15, 2002

35% of firms monitor staff e-mail

Thirty-five percent of Japanese companies monitor the Internet browsing and e-mail records of their employees to ensure that company online facilities are not used for private purposes, according to a survey conducted by the Japan Institute of Labor.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 11, 2002

Coffee machines, bread, teas . . . whatever next?

Marcel Niederhauser is one happy businessman. In the lobby of Tokyo's Hilton Hotel in Shinjuku, visiting the small shop he opened with a Japanese partner just two weeks ago, he learns that the first day of Golden Week has been a bonanza. "We moved some 120 packs of tea. We're very, very happy with the...
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 5, 2002

Naturalized entrepreneur jumps conservative obstacles

It's bad enough for a would-be entrepreneur that Japan is suffering a protracted economic slump and the country is bound -- still -- by archaic business practices.
JAPAN
Apr 25, 2002

FTC orders Marubeni chicken plant to shut down

The Fair Trade Commission said Wednesday it has ordered Marubeni Chikusan Corp. to cease production over its intentional mislabeling of some 1,700 tons of chicken during an almost three-year period beginning in 1999.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 3, 2002

Dance artist of his floating world

As a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet from 1993 to 1998, Tetsuya Kumakawa was a sensation on stage at Covent Garden. London's discerning audiences thrilled to the incomparable ability of this boyish young man, just 21 when he became the first Japanese male dancer to take center stage with the company....
BUSINESS
Mar 23, 2002

Daiwa announces tieup with Agricole

Daiwa Bank Holdings Inc., the nation's fifth-largest banking group, on Friday announced a business alliance with French bank Credit Agricole SA.
BUSINESS
Mar 23, 2002

Mitsubishi Materials plans to sell Osaka's OAP Towers

Mitsubishi Materials Corp. plans to sell its 50 percent stake in OAP Towers, a building in Osaka, to a company outside its group, the company said Friday.
BUSINESS / ON MANAGEMENT
Mar 12, 2002

Honesty as a policy

Although it seems that everybody now has an opinion on the Enron debacle, I still think that the business lessons to be learned have been slighted. In a sense, what has happened with this three-card monte version of a corporation is a reflection of the worst single tendency of the last quarter-century...
BUSINESS
Mar 3, 2002

Sato Kogyo to commence bankruptcy proceedings

Sato Kogyo Co., a midsize construction contractor with group liabilities estimated at more than 500 billion yen, has given up efforts to rehabilitate itself and will resort to legal bankruptcy proceedings, company sources said Saturday.

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan