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JAPAN
Feb 22, 2006

Aso wants oversight of ODA entity

Foreign Minister Taro Aso said Tuesday the Foreign Ministry should have sole oversight of a planned entity that would integrate the three official development assistance operations -- grants, technical cooperation and yen loans.
JAPAN
Feb 22, 2006

Livedoor shareholders to seek damages

Livedoor Co. shareholders plan to sue former President Takafumi Horie and other former top executives around September, their lawyers said Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Feb 22, 2006

BOJ's focus on CPI is only natural, Yosano says

Economic and fiscal policy minister Kaoru Yosano said Tuesday he understands the Bank of Japan's position of basing any policy shift on the consumer price index.
JAPAN
Feb 21, 2006

U.S. beef report insufficient: Nakagawa

The U.S. report on its probe into a shipment last month of banned bovine material and measures to prevent a recurrence is "insufficient," farm minister Shoichi Nakagawa said Monday, adding that Japan plans to raise a range of questions with Washington.
JAPAN
Feb 21, 2006

Child killings cast light on isolated foreign moms

The arrest of a Chinese woman in Friday's fatal stabbing of two children she routinely drove to kindergarten in Nagahama, Shiga Prefecture, has cast a light on the problems foreigners face in trying to fit into Japanese society.
JAPAN
Feb 21, 2006

Lower House members not quite as rich

The average value of assets held by 479 House of Representatives lawmakers elected last September is 49.78 million yen excluding equities, according to a Kyodo News survey based on declarations released Monday.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 21, 2006

Empire of debt has its limits

HONG KONG -- Recent news about U.S. current-account deficits with the rest of the world gives grim pause for thought from Beijing and Tokyo to London, and especially in Washington, for it shows the United States approaching the financial equivalent of a nuclear meltdown.
BUSINESS
Feb 21, 2006

Livedoor could be delisted if more warrants are issued

The Tokyo Stock Exchange may delist Livedoor Co. if prosecutors serve fresh arrest warrants to its former executives for the company's alleged accounting frauds, TSE President Taizo Nishimuro said Monday.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Feb 21, 2006

Party round-up: Chloe, Maison Martin Margiela, Bernhard Willhelm, Alexander Lee-Chang . . .

It's been a busy month for the Tokyo style scene, with a flurry of high-profile store openings culminating in an unveiling of the monumental Omotesando Hills that coincided with extravagant 100th anniversary bashes for luxury pen brand Mont Blanc and jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels. All this meant a punishing...
COMMENTARY
Feb 20, 2006

New demands, more delays

Japan and North Korea made little progress toward solving their problems in five days of bilateral talks that ended early this month in Beijing. The only agreement was to continue to talk.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 19, 2006

Careful planning helps to preserve male-succession mind-set

The morning after it broke, news that Princess Kiko is expecting a baby in September was greeted with predictably meaningless blather on the TV wide shows. Commentators made a connection between the pregnancy and that ceremony the princess and her husband, Prince Akishino, attended in September of last...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 19, 2006

Winners are losers, too, in the lingering ledger of war

Ex-soldiers, dressed entirely in white hospital-like attire, some without an arm or a leg, stood or sat in the precincts of a shrine. Some played plaintive tunes on concertinas. Others had a little dog beside them to garner the sympathy of passersby. Often the dog wore a little beanie or sported cheap...
BUSINESS
Feb 18, 2006

Trade deficit expected for January

Private-sector economists expect Japan to report a trade deficit for January for the first time in five years due to higher oil import prices, a Kyodo News poll of 24 economists showed Friday.
JAPAN
Feb 18, 2006

Condemned serial killer's book out

Condemned serial murderer Tsutomu Miyazaki has authored a book that compiles his letters to a publisher, branding the Supreme Court "an idiot" for sentencing him to death for killing four girls, the publisher said.
BUSINESS
Feb 18, 2006

JAL chief snubs demand to quit

Japan Airlines Corp. President Toshiyuki Shinmachi has expressed his intention to stay in his post until March 2007, rebuffing a recent request to step down to take responsibility for the airline group's poor business performance, a major JAL shareholder said Friday.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Feb 18, 2006

Winesburg, Japan, and the will of God

Sherwood Anderson once charmed America with a collection of short stories focused on the fictional town of Winesburg, Ohio. The stories portrayed normal people in the normal agony of their normal lives, tales that made Winesburg a hometown for everyone. One story in particular told of a modest clergyman...
JAPAN
Feb 16, 2006

Women left in China fail to win redress

The Tokyo District Court on Wednesday dismissed a damages lawsuit filed against the state by three Japanese women left behind in China during the final stages of World War II.
JAPAN
Feb 16, 2006

Soga did brief tutoring in North: Jenkins

SADO, Niigata Pref. (Kyodo) Ex-U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins, who spent four decades in North Korea and now lives in Japan, said Wednesday his wife, freed Pyongyang abductee Hitomi Soga, only had to coach six men and women, including army officers, in Japanese on three occasions in the North between...
JAPAN
Feb 16, 2006

Japan regrets Iran's nuclear step

The Foreign Ministry expressed regret Wednesday over Tehran's nuclear defiance.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 16, 2006

At least no new wars began

The Davos-based World Economic Forum has just published the third annual report of its Global Governance Initiative. The past year was rated slightly less dangerous than 2004 but still a long way from being safe and secure. The United Nation's 60th Anniversary World Summit in September, a once-in-a-generation...
JAPAN
Feb 15, 2006

'Manga' industry worried cyberspace bootleggers may spread

Comic book artists and industry officials expressed concern Tuesday about the potential for illegal distribution on the Internet, pointing to cheap and simple technologies that could spawn homemade bootleg factories.
BUSINESS
Feb 15, 2006

Most U.S. beef processors safe: LDP team

Most U.S. beef processing facilities looking to export beef to Japan are taking sufficient measures to satisfy the criteria agreed upon between the United States and Japan, an inspection team of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party said Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Feb 15, 2006

E-mail alleges Livedoor told unit to make false purchases

Livedoor Co. asked an online marriage information company suspected of playing a part in its alleged accounting fraud to provide a fictitious profit of 120 million yen to a Livedoor group company in 2004, a Livedoor e-mail message obtained Tuesday by Kyodo News showed.
JAPAN
Feb 14, 2006

LDP to study keeping male-line succession

A panel of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party will study a wide range of issues related to revising the Imperial House Law, including ways to preserve the male line of Imperial succession, LDP policy chief Hidenao Nakagawa said.

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