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COMMENTARY / World
Jun 15, 2002

No winners in Shenyang case

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Now that a little time has gone by, and peoples' attention is distracted by the World Cup, it is time for a little quiet thinking about the implications of the Shenyang incident. This was the incident in which Chinese police forcibly removed five North Koreans from the Japanese...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 14, 2002

Hooligan fears prove unfounded

OSAKA — Fears of hooligans running rampant in Osaka on Wednesday after a key World Cup soccer tie between England and Nigeria proved unfounded, and now opinions are mixed over the heavy security and concern prior to the game.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 2, 2002

Who's got the scoop on the Shenyang Five?

The disagreement between the foreign ministries of Japan and China over the attempted defection by five North Koreans at the Japanese consulate in Shenyang was intensified by a comment made early on by LDP Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda. During a press conference, Fukuda looked at the assembled...
Japan Times
JAPAN / KANSAI BEAT
May 22, 2002

Hooligan hype threatens to get out of hand

OSAKA -- Does Osaka really want lots of foreign visitors to come for the World Cup?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 19, 2002

Credit companies target the debt-ridden poor

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A bored young man answers his telephone and his face lights up. "Diving?!" he says. "I'll be there." In the next scene we see his friends on a pier, happily putting on scuba gear. Then, from the end of another pier, the young man comes running, with only a snorkel....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
May 1, 2002

Young artists are making a splash

The third installment in an almost-annual series (they skipped it last year), "New Media New Face 02" is now showing at the NTT InterCommunication Center, in Shinjuku. The work here, from four Japanese artists, falls into the vague but trendy, technology-based genre known as "media art."
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 11, 2002

Vested-interest policymakers irked over report that pulls few punches

Lawmakers within the ruling coalition were left aghast by a scathing report submitted last week by a panel investigating the government's handling of mad cow disease.
COMMUNITY
Mar 31, 2002

The horror from the heart of darkness

It was a rough drive to the Cambodian town of Takeo in 1992. Going faster than 30 kph would have been suicidal. National Highway 2 was an unsurfaced dirt road pockmarked with craters from shells and land mines. Takeo, about 60 km south of the capital Phnom Penh, served as a base that year for an engineering...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 17, 2002

The Imperial family: celebrities or deities?

At a press conference to mark his 68th birthday last December, Emperor Akihito surprised reporters by saying that he felt a strong "kinship" with Korea.
COMMENTARY
Mar 10, 2002

Modern delusions of equality

LONDON -- Ask a total stranger about his or her sex life and, though he may be taken aback, he is likely to take it in stride. For what's so secret about sex? Ask a total stranger about his or her income, and she is likely to biff you for your impudence. Money is all secrets and lies.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 8, 2002

Propaganda fuels Muslim anti-Semitism

NEW YORK -- It was, by all accounts, a heinous conclusion to a barbaric crime. The Pakistani kidnappers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl forced him to state that he was a Jew and his mother and father were Jews. Then, having laid out their legal case, the killers slit his throat and beheaded...
COMMENTARY
Feb 1, 2002

Truth and consequences

The forced resignation of Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka says a lot about Japan's sloppy politics and its emotional inability to focus on the rights and wrongs of a dispute.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 6, 2002

Faces of 2001: who's hot and who's not

Media Personality of the Year: Ichiro Suzuki or Junichiro Koizumi
COMMUNITY
Dec 16, 2001

Photo-news loses its focus

Last August's demise of Shinchosha's weekly photo newsmagazine Focus marked a major publishing milestone in Japan.
JAPAN
Dec 2, 2001

Long wait over for royal couple

The waiting is now over for the Crown Prince and Crown Princess, who celebrated the birth of their first child -- a girl -- on Saturday, 8 1/2 years after their wedding.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 2, 2001

Making the polluter pay

MINAMATA: Pollution and the Struggle For Democracy in Postwar Japan, by Timothy S. George. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001, 385 pp., $45 (cloth) The story of mercury poisoning suffered by residents near the port of Minamata in Kyushu is a well-known tale of knavery on a grand scale. A telling...
JAPAN
Oct 23, 2001

Asia Press freelancers find niche in Afghan war

The ongoing military operation in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States has widened opportunities for freelance journalists in Asia.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 7, 2001

What Lara can tell us about Afghanistan

Angelina Jolie's new movie, "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," might not be up to much, but I have a lot of respect for Jolie herself. On Sept. 10, at a Tokyo press conference to promote the film, the actress mentioned her new job as special ambassador for the U.N. High Commission for Refugees. She spent almost...
JAPAN
Oct 6, 2001

Press info access first casualty of war

As the U.S. prepares to launch retaliatory strikes on those believed to be behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the media's frustration over the tight control of information by the U.S. authorities is reportedly on the rise.
JAPAN
Oct 4, 2001

Firms flock to voice-command future

Building on the dramatic improvements in voice-recognition technology, software development companies are competing to create voice-activated products and services.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Sep 13, 2001

How many Rhodes must a man walk down before he gets some attention in the dailies?

I had the pleasure last week of meeting Tokyo's most talkative taxi driver. He picked me up in Shibuya and dropped me off in Roppongi some 15 minutes later. In that time we talked baseball nonstop with the Giants-Carp game humming in the background.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 25, 2001

Why Dear Leader isn't going to Seoul

SEOUL -- "All contacts have stopped. We had expected North Korea to take up the process again, but they haven't," says South Korean Foreign Minister Han Seung Soo. Since Pyongyang left negotiations last March, not much has happened diplomatically between the two estranged Koreas.
JAPAN
Jun 12, 2001

Reporters are asked for a little common courtesy

OSAKA — Anger on the part of the local community toward the way the media reported on the slaying of eight children at Osaka Kyoiku University Ikeda Elementary School and on the aftermath prompted mental care experts Sunday to demand an end to what they call psychologically damaging coverage.
COMMENTARY
Jun 8, 2001

Reform easier said than done

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi replaced former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori on the grounds that he was a reformist and Mori was not. Yet Koizumi's first move was to cancel one of Mori's sensible reforms -- the bid to settle Japan's Northern Territories dispute with Moscow by first accepting the two...
JAPAN
Jun 8, 2001

Tanaka-bureaucrat standoff yet to let up

Despite the announcement Wednesday of Foreign Ministry reform plans and the lifting Monday of a "freeze" on personnel transfers, the standoff between Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka and senior bureaucrats is showing no signs of abating.
JAPAN
May 26, 2001

New panel proposal is criticized as soft on violations by state

Concern over freedom of the press has been the media's main focus in covering a government panel's proposal to launch an independent human rights watchdog, while other key aspects have been largely ignored.
BASEBALL / MLB
May 15, 2001

Ichiro show rolls on in Canada

TORONTO -- The Ichiro Show has played to rave reviews in the U.S. for the first six weeks of the baseball season. This past weekend, it was a smash hit in its Canadian debut.
JAPAN
Apr 23, 2001

Taiwan's Lee arrives in Japan for checkup

OSAKA -- Former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui arrived in Japan on Sunday evening for a five-day stay to have a medical checkup, a visit that China says will be met with a "necessary reaction."
CULTURE / Film
Mar 27, 2001

When justice looks the other way

Directors, as they age, usually must either move with the times or find themselves waiting by a silent phone. Since the days of D.W. Griffith, Hollywood has been full of once lordly directors who, having fallen out of fashion, are relegated to telling anecdotes about their glory days to deferential young...

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