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JAPAN
Jul 23, 2002

Panel mulls closed-door patent hearings

A government panel on judicial reform will consider a proposed revision to the Code of Civil Procedure that would allow oral arguments on patents and other intellectual property rights to be held behind closed doors in court, panel sources said Monday.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / CLOSE-UP
Jul 7, 2002

Crusader for life on death row

Sister Helen Prejean, a nun with the Order of Saint Joseph of Medaille since 1957, has been accompanying death-row inmates to their executions since 1982. In her award-winning book "Dead Man Walking," which was made into a film in 1995, she relates the spiritual journey she went through with death-row...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 23, 2002

Make more babies: by any means necessary

About five years ago, a mother in Kansas City started wondering about the paternity of her twins. Becky Peck had recently divorced, and she became more sensitive to what she perceived as the physical and behavioral differences between herself and her two children, Lindsay and Jeremy. Her ex-husband was...
COMMENTARY
Jun 17, 2002

Cracks in a nonnuclear core

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda's comment on Japan's three nonnuclear principles caused political confusion at home and deepened misunderstanding abroad.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 12, 2002

Poetry that's music to the ears of millions

POEMS OF THE GOAT, by Chuya Nakahara, translated by Ry Beville. American Book Company, Richmond, VA, 2002, 77 pp., $15/2500 yen (paper) Why do some writers get translated and others -- better, more deserving -- remain obscure? This is a question that Ry Beville, a young Virginia native, asked himself...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 28, 2002

They came, they saw, they democratized

"Bataan," the C-54 transport carrying Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers (SCAP), landed at Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture, at 2:05 p.m. on Aug. 30. The general, wearing sunglasses and puffing on a corncob pipe, struck a dramatic pose near the top of the ladder for the more than...
SOCCER / THE BALD TRUTH
Apr 16, 2002

Careful with that tree, Eugene!

After months of teetering on the brink of full-blown silliness, World Cup organizers finally appear to have plunged into a vortex occupied by Teletubbies, giant talking tadpoles and Benny Hill lookalikes.
JAPAN
Apr 10, 2002

Cultural figures oppose defense bills

Some 250 cultural figures, including prizewinning novelist Hisashi Inoue, issued a statement Tuesday expressing their opposition to legislation planned by the government to cover defense emergencies, saying it threatens to turn Japan again into a militaristic nation.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 4, 2002

Beating the U.N. endgame in Cambodia

CANBERRA -- The U.N. Secretariat's Feb. 8 announcement ending further cooperation with Cambodia on jointly run Khmer Rouge trials has set off a round of international commentary, mostly unfavorable to Cambodia. Here is an attempt to set the record straight, based on reliable public sources.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 28, 2002

Workshops for mentally ill feel fenced in

A newspaper article that called attention to the May 1981 opening of the Aoi Mugi No Ie workshop for the mentally ill, mainly schizophrenics, in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, sparked a 15-year campaign by local residents to drive the facility away.
COMMENTARY / JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL ERA
Feb 4, 2002

English-language deficit handicaps Japan

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- In 1984 I was invited to give a public lecture at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. I began by apologizing for the fact that I would not be able to deliver my lecture in Dutch. I went on to remark that had I been alive at the time of Erasmus, I would have given my lecture in Latin....
JAPAN
Nov 26, 2001

Miyazawa steadfast against calls to revise Constitution

Japan does not need to revise its pacifist Constitution concerning its efforts in security affairs and should focus on international cooperation in nonmilitary areas, former Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa said Sunday.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 22, 2001

Protecting the public from the threats of terror and depression

In his Sept. 30 New York Times article, "The Fear Economy," MIT economist Paul Krugman warned that the American public should be prepared for a possible deflationary spiral comparable to the Great Depression of the 1930s and Japan's milder but chronic depression of the 1990s. A major depression could...
JAPAN
Nov 17, 2001

Proposed bills detail Constitution review steps

A group of lawmakers considering review of the Constitution proposed two related bills Friday for submission to the ordinary Diet session to convene in January.
JAPAN
Nov 17, 2001

Proposed bills detail Constitution review steps

A group of lawmakers considering review of the Constitution proposed two related bills Friday for submission to the ordinary Diet session to convene in January.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 14, 2001

Where do we go from here?

Almost 20 minutes into my interview with Aidan and David, two members of the Montreal-based band Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Aidan said that he didn't think my questions were very good and that the interview was a waste of time. He expressed himself not angrily but with genuine frustration at my transparently...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 27, 2001

Immigrants' uphill battle to learn English

SANTA MARIA, Calif. -- The Asian immigrant was described as speaking in "halting English" even after 20 years of living in the United States. The reporter of the Central California newspaper seemed to suggest that 20 years of living in the country should have resulted in a strong command of the language....
COMMENTARY
Aug 12, 2001

Yasukuni issue shows little has changed

August used to see Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the focus for Japan's wartime remembrances. But this year the focus has violently shifted to Yasukuni Shrine. Either way we see Japan's inability to come to terms with its militaristic past.
JAPAN
Aug 6, 2001

Yasukuni visit 'will certainly be made,' says Yamasaki

Taku Yamasaki, secretary general of the governing Liberal Democratic Party, said Sunday that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will definitely pay a visit to Yasukuni Shrine, where Class A war criminals are honored, despite strong opposition from neighboring Asian countries.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 5, 2001

'It's a complicated story,' pleads a battered press

The press has taken quite a beating over its coverage of the murders at Ikeda Elementary School. Even before the funerals, letters to the editor columns were filled with missives from enraged readers lam basting the media's lack of either common decency or common sense. Most complaints concerned interviews...
JAPAN
Aug 3, 2001

Yasukuni furor sparks legal threat

Citizens' groups said Thursday they may sue Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi for violating the Constitution if he visits Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine on the Aug. 15 anniversary of Japan's World War II surrender.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 15, 2001

Dismantling stereotypes surrounding Japan's sacred entities

SHINTO IN HISTORY: Ways of the Kami, edited by John Breen and Mark Teeuwen. Richmond, Surrey, U.K.: Curzon Press, 1999, 368 pp., 45 British pounds (cloth); 15 pounds (paper). "Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami" is the first attempt in any Western language (and possibly even in Japanese) to offer...
CULTURE / Music
Jun 20, 2001

Combat rock

At the Tokyo office of Bad Music Co., Ltd. the walls are covered in skulls and crossbones of various designs and a man in black is sitting at a table smoking strong cigarettes.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 18, 2001

The price of the 'New World blitzkrieg'

LONDON -- "The survivors are scraps," says evolutionary biologist Dr. John Alroy about the large mammal species that remain in North America after the wave of extinctions that followed the arrival of the first humans less than 14,000 years ago. And there is no longer any question about why all the rest...
COMMENTARY
Jun 13, 2001

A windfall for Nepal's Maoists

KATMANDU -- The picturesque Himalayan nation of Nepal, wedged between India and China-occupied Tibet, was once an idyllic hideaway for Western trekkers and hippies. Although still a popular tourist destination, Nepal has been wracked in recent years by an expanding Maoist insurrection in the countryside....
EDITORIALS
Jun 3, 2001

A candle that won't go out

Forty years ago, a British lawyer named Peter Benenson read in his morning paper about two Portuguese students who had been arrested in a Lisbon cafe and sentenced to seven years in prison for having drunk a toast "to freedom," a code phrase for opposition to the government of then dictator Antonio de...
JAPAN
Jun 2, 2001

Korean wins state medical payout

OSAKA — The Osaka District Court ordered the Osaka Prefectural Government on Friday to pay a Korean survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima medical allowances that it had stopped paying after the man returned home from Japan.

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