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Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 14, 2003

Party faithful and unaffiliated voters rally behind Tokyo incumbent: poll

Shintaro Ishihara, re-elected as Tokyo governor in a landslide in Sunday's election, was supported by nearly 70 percent of unaffiliated voters and 90 percent of supporters of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, according to a Kyodo News exit poll.
JAPAN
Apr 14, 2003

Confident Ishihara plots even more radical course

Emboldened by an easy win in Sunday's gubernatorial election, Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara indicated he will pursue even more eyebrow-raising policies during his second four-year term.
JAPAN
Apr 13, 2003

Japanese play down foreigners' rights: survey

Japanese people are inclined to play down the rights that foreign residents of Japan are entitled to, according to a government survey released Saturday.
BUSINESS
Apr 12, 2003

U.N. must seize the day in postwar Iraq: Shiokawa

The United Nations must act boldly and swiftly create a framework and environment to help rebuild war-ravaged Iraq, Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa said Friday.
JAPAN
Apr 12, 2003

Cloned beef may hit grocery stores later in the year

A health ministry report released Friday says that meat and milk of cows cloned from the somatic cells of adult animals are safe for human consumption.
BASEBALL / MLB
Apr 11, 2003

Suzuki, Swallows stomp Giants

Ken Suzuki went 4-for-5 with a double and six RBIs as the Yakult Swallows stomped the defending Japan Series Champion Yomiuri Giants 12-2 on Thursday night at Jingu Stadium.
JAPAN
Apr 11, 2003

Japan shuns talk of Pyongyang leaving NPT

As a three-month waiting period North Korea had to observe to officially withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty ended Thursday, Japan refused to acknowledge the validity of its neighbor's actions.
BUSINESS
Apr 11, 2003

BOJ chief issues plea for global coordination

In a rare glimpse of the man behind the cautious rhetoric, Bank of Japan Gov. Toshihiko Fukui made a passionate plea Thursday for coordinated economic policy in an increasingly fractious world.
JAPAN
Apr 11, 2003

Japan to make 'responsible contribution' to rebuilding Iraq

Japan will make a "responsible contribution" to the reconstruction of postwar Iraq, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said Thursday, responding to the effective collapse of President Saddam Hussein's regime the previous day.
JAPAN
Apr 10, 2003

LDP seen doing well in weekend elections

The Liberal Democratic Party is likely to secure nearly 1,400 of the 2,634 seats up for grabs in 44 prefectural assemblies in local elections on Sunday, according to a Kyodo News survey released Wednesday.
JAPAN
Apr 10, 2003

$100 million in Iraq aid pledged

Japan unveiled Wednesday a framework for humanitarian aid to Iraq that sets a limit of $100 million on financial support for international organizations.
EDITORIALS
Apr 10, 2003

The SARS toll mounts

Concern over severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, continues to rise. Two weeks ago, we reported 350 cases of the disease worldwide that had resulted in 10 deaths. At the beginning of this week, the World Health Organization reported more than 2,600 cases, with 100 deaths, in 18 countries; it is...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Apr 10, 2003

Close encounters with 'the world's rarest gull'

CHENGDU, China -- Li Shang-yin, a writer of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), is said to have kept five species of birds in his garden, including a graceful gull whose head and bill were black, and which had a distinctive semicircle of white behind its eye.
Japan Times
JAPAN / GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS '03
Apr 10, 2003

Popular Mie reformist tough act to follow

Third in a series ASAKO MURAKAMI Staff writer TSU, Mie Pref. -- Mie Gov. Masayasu Kitagawa's sudden announcement last November not to seek a third term ruffled political feathers both at the local and national levels.
BUSINESS
Apr 10, 2003

Shiokawa to talk shop with Snow

Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa said Wednesday he will meet with U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow on the sidelines of international meetings in Washington later this week.
LIFE / Digital / NETWISE
Apr 10, 2003

Sifting online study aids

Just a few years ago, I was certain I could never get by without Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary and the venerable Nelson close at hand. Today, however, these and other weighty tomes gather dust on a nearby bookshelf, banished to obsolescence by my favorite desktop reference, the Web.
Japan Times
JAPAN / GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS '03
Apr 9, 2003

Parties kept at distance in Kanagawa race

YOKOHAMA -- The last-minute candidacy of Yoko Tajima, a former House of Councilors lawmaker and celebrated feminist scholar, in the April 13 Kanagawa gubernatorial election has added a new wrinkle into an already crowded field.
BUSINESS
Apr 9, 2003

Details of Iraq's reconstruction seen unlikely to be broached at G7 meet

When finance chiefs and central bankers from major industrialized countries meet in Washington later this week, they probably won't discuss specifics of the rebuilding of Iraq, senior Japanese officials said Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Apr 9, 2003

NEC expects to book loss for second straight year

NEC Corp. has lowered its group earnings forecast to an expected group net loss of 25 billion yen for the 2002 business year, which ended March 31, the firm said Tuesday.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 8, 2003

Astro 'birthday' Boy is staging a comeback

Astro Boy, the futuristic robot who was the focus of a television cartoon boom in the 1960s and who just had his "birthday," is making a comeback on film and television screens and in new and reproduced comic books.
JAPAN
Apr 8, 2003

Airline unions seek SARS freeze

Three bodies representing airline unions in Japan called Monday for a suspension of flights to countries and regions affected by the deadly epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome.
BUSINESS
Apr 8, 2003

Japan, Vietnam concur on investment accord

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and his visiting Vietnamese counterpart, Phan Van Khai, agreed Monday on the basics of a bilateral investment treaty that would give each country most- favored nation status.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Apr 8, 2003

Society fiddles as young get burned

The vernacular media frequently goes tsk-tsk over crimes by juveniles. These days, people's concerns tend to be reflected through two terms: "kyoaku-ka" and "teinenrei-ka," which refer, respectively, to more violent crimes by increasingly younger perpetrators
EDITORIALS
Apr 6, 2003

Embedded in war's twilight zone

One of the most unusual things about the quite unusual war going on in Iraq is the presence of so-called embedded reporters, or "embeds," assigned to British and U.S. ground units, aviation units, ships and headquarters throughout the combat zone. The only difficulty is trying to figure out the significance...
BUSINESS
Apr 5, 2003

Chinese towels safe from tariffs

Japan will not impose safeguard tariffs on towels imported from China for the time being, trade minister Takeo Hiranuma said Friday.
BUSINESS
Apr 5, 2003

IRC execs implore banks to sell bad loans

Newly appointed executives of the government's planned industrial revival body delivered a zealous sales pitch Friday, urging banks to sell to the entity loans extended to debt-laden firms as soon as possible.

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight