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Japan Times
SOCCER
Apr 21, 2007

Osieck's Reds face Asian allies Frontale in league

After finishing champions and runners-up in the J. League last season, Urawa Reds and Kawasaki Frontale have a newly forged domestic rivalry -- which means Saturday afternoon's clash at Saitama Stadium will be a keenly contested one.
BASKETBALL
Apr 21, 2007

Evessa primed to retain bj-league title

When you win a league's first-ever championship, you establish a standard of excellence for your coaching staff, your players and your fans.
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Apr 20, 2007

Bryant analyzes bj-league's 'final four'

Tokyo Apache coach Joe Bryant knows the ins and outs of each of the bj-league's seven other teams.
EDITORIALS
Apr 20, 2007

Tragedy in Nagasaki

A nightmare has descended upon the city of Nagasaki again. On Tuesday evening, a gangster shot and mortally wounded Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito. The mayor was campaigning for a fourth term in a Sunday election. Seventeen years ago, Mr. Ito's predecessor Hitoshi Motojima was seriously injured after being...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Apr 20, 2007

The wax and wane of Uchiko

To the enormous surprise of absolutely no one except the most irrepressible Pollyannas in or closely connected with the construction industry, the 19 years since the opening of the first of the gargantuan civil-engineering white elephants that go by the name of the Honshu-Shikoku bridges have not witnessed...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Apr 19, 2007

'Profile ads' riding back of SNS boom

If in recent days you happened to visit the Mobile Game Town community, a social networking site for cell phone users, you may well have bumped into a character named Fanta.
CULTURE / Art
Apr 19, 2007

"Fiona Tan: News from the Near Future"

Wako Works of Art Closes in 23 days
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 19, 2007

Works beyond Osaka's sun

If your knowledge of Taro Okamoto's work begins and ends with the sculpture "Tower of the Sun" that he created for the 1970 Osaka Expo, a visit to "Taro Okamoto and His Contemporaries in the Post-War Era," now at the Setagaya Art Museum, is in order.
BASKETBALL
Apr 18, 2007

Veteran Hasegawa confident Albirex can make bj-league final

Even at age 36, Makoto Hasegawa is still on fire.
Reader Mail
Apr 18, 2007

Depiction of Japanese history

In his March 29 article, "Abe needlessly fans the flames," Francis Fukuyama is right to assert that the Yushukan museum adjacent to Yasukuni Shrine is the bigger problem of the two because of its nationalist depiction of Pacific War history.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Apr 17, 2007

SDF emerging as the military it truly is

The government has steadily expanded the activities of the Self-Defense Forces since the 1990s as the nation sought to play greater roles in international political and security affairs. Public perceptions toward the SDF have also changed in line with changes in the security environment, espe cially...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Apr 17, 2007

Stalking: readers respond

Japan Times readers wrote in to express their opinions about the Zeit Gist column headlind "Reported stalking cases likely just tip of iceberg" by Thomasina Larkin published on April 10. Here's what they had to say:
COMMENTARY
Apr 16, 2007

Preserving the countryside

LONDON -- In Britain we have not yet quite lost the battle to preserve the countryside, but it is far from won. In Japan, however, it looks to many outsiders as if preservation is a lost cause.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Apr 15, 2007

Igawa may learn hard way how tough New York fans can be

New York Yankees lefty pitcher Kei Igawa made a less-than-spectacular major league debut at home on April 7, giving up seven runs in five innings against the Baltimore Orioles, though he was bailed out and saved from taking a loss by Alex Rodriguez, whose "sayonara" grand slam eventually won it for the...
Reader Mail
Apr 15, 2007

Levity relieves biases

If the image of Hachiko on his way to China on a junk freighter brought a smile at the expense of any "minority group" in Japan -- as Eve Campbell alleges it might have in her April 8 letter, "A joke that can fan prejudices" -- the only group that would qualify as the butt of such humor would be an international...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 15, 2007

A great naturalist, and a pretty good shot

BORNEO, CELEBES, ARU, by Alfred Russel Wallace. London: Penguin Books, 2007, 112 pp., with maps, £4.99 (paper) The great naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) traveled widely in what was then called the East Indies and which we now know as Malaysia and Indonesia. Between 1854 and 1862 he wandered...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Apr 15, 2007

Train fan's dream buy is derailed online

Internet-auction sites allow people to sell and buy, at the click of a mouse or with a push on a cellphone button, almost anything from brand bags to resort condominiums to moldy Imperial Japanese Army uniforms. And, according to a 2005 report by Nomura Research Institute, in Japan it's a market that...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / ONE-ON-ONE WITH ...
Apr 15, 2007

Okabayashi bridges communication gap for HeatDevils on, off court

The Japan Times will be featuring periodic interviews with figures in the bj-league -- Japan's first professional basketball circuit -- which is in its second season. Kyoko Okabayashi of the Oita HeatDevils is the subject of this week's profile.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 15, 2007

LDP fuddy-duddies' social engineering hits women and the birthrate

Earlier this month, the ruling coalition put together a bill to change part of the Civil Code that determines the paternity of a child under certain circumstances. The planned revision, which editorial writers supported for its acknowledgment of practical reality, nevertheless split the Liberal Democratic...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Apr 14, 2007

Hard to envision Mourinho leaving Chelsea, despite friction with Abramovich

LONDON -- I am not a billionaire. I do not own a number of hugely profitable companies. Unlike Roman Abramovich, I am not the owner of Chelsea Football Club.
BUSINESS
Apr 14, 2007

ANA to sell 13 domestic hotels to Morgan Stanley

All Nippon Airways Co. announced Friday it will sell its 13 domestic hotels to U.S. brokerage giant Morgan Stanley for about 280 billion yen -- a move that will allow the carrier to focus on its core airline business.
BASEBALL / MLB'S EFFECT ON JAPAN
Apr 14, 2007

NPB players in need of strong union like MLBPA

Last of four-part
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Apr 13, 2007

Vienna Boys' Choir pay homage to trad, pop worlds

Vienna Boys' Choir, known for their exquisite voices and on-stage charm, return to Japan to give 23 performances across the country from April 27 to June 17.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 13, 2007

'Dresden'

German movies are making headway into mainstream international cinema ("Perfume" and "Head On" leap to the mind), opening up a new window from which to view stories of love, obsession, history and war. "Dresden" takes all these themes and weaves them into one episode: the bombing of Dresden during World...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 12, 2007

Best when grotesque

One good point about public museums in Japan having "funding issues" is that rather than pulling in the art that the public really wants to see and turning themselves into virtual Musee d'Orsays or ersatz Guggenheims, they instead focus on more academically valuable and locally relevant work.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Apr 12, 2007

Something for everyone

Fine art collecting being widely regarded as a pursuit of the privileged, one can appreciate the trepidation of the everyman regarding the auction and gallery scene.
BASEBALL / MLB'S EFFECT ON JAPAN
Apr 11, 2007

Is the MLB destroying Japan's national pastime?

Best-selling author Robert Whiting, who has penned such classics as "You Gotta Have Wa," "The Chrysanthemum and the Bat" and "The Meaning of Ichiro," has written an exclusive four-part series for The Japan Times on the effect Major League Baseball is having on the Japanese pro game, and how the poor...
MORE SPORTS
Apr 10, 2007

Cracks appear in Tiger's major myth

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- A 4-iron wasn't the only thing that Tiger Woods broke Sunday at the Masters.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Apr 8, 2007

Nice debut for 'Dice-K', Eagles day games, MLB events

Nice major league debut for "Dice-K," eh?
Reader Mail
Apr 8, 2007

A joke that can fan prejudices

Although the front-page April 1 article "Shibuya's loyal dog Hachiko vanishes" was clearly an April fool's joke, I don't think The Japan Times should do things like this at the expense of minority groups. (In this case the story suggested that soaring prices for copper and other metals, spurred by the...

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years