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CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 13, 2003

Siam's Greek Faulcon

FALCON: At the Court of Siam, by John Hoskin. Bangkok, Asia Books, 2002, 275 pp., 425 Baht (paper) Constantine Phaulkon, a famous Greek adventurer of the 17th century, who had a meteoric rise in King Narai's Siam (former name of Thailand) and an equally dramatic end, seems to continue attracting the...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 12, 2003

Odaiba beach not even safe for sewer rats to dip in

It's Tokyo's premier beach -- a strip of wave-washed sand carefully constructed more than a decade ago in a multibillion yen project to give the sprawling capital an ultramodern waterfront.
BUSINESS
Apr 12, 2003

Army of Carlos Ghosns may be in the making

We all know the Carlos Ghosn story.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 11, 2003

Futility felt by journalist drives him to show war's true face

Hearing U.S. bombs find their targets and feeling the ground shake under his Baghdad hotel, Kosuke Tsuneoka was struck by the futility of his plan to serve as a "human shield" and stop the war.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Apr 11, 2003

Tarlum: The big breakfast

Tokyo is not big on breakfast. Granted, there's no shortage of places to grab a sandwich or a Danish with your long latte mochacino. A kissaten "morning set" should furnish a boiled egg with a slab of faintly browned igirsu-pan (they blame white bread on the English, here). And a family restaurant can...
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Apr 10, 2003

Right time for Bulls owner to dump Krause

PHILADELPHIA -- Who would have thought Jerry Krause's regime would topple before Saddam Hussein's? In power since March of 1985, the bellicose Chicago Bulls GM took a well-deserved, long overdue hit Monday -- five games before his five-year-old rebuilding permit (following six championship Michael Jordan-emblazoned...
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
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 9, 2003

Roll up, the lion tamer's in town

Hurry, hurry, step right up, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. Right this way. The circus has come to town!
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.
COMMENTARY
Apr 7, 2003

Diplomatic offensive awaits

LOS ANGELES -- Iraq is finding out what it means to be an enemy of the United States. But what does it mean to be a friend?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 6, 2003

Whole-istic medicine: being treated the traditional Chinese way

Thanks to modern medicine, many diseases that were fatal a few decades ago can now be cured. And with the decoding of the human genome, Western medicine is on the verge of taking another mighty leap forward.
BUSINESS
Apr 5, 2003

Honda Fit takes Corolla's crown

The Honda Fit compact took over the title of the nation's best-selling car in fiscal 2002, muscling aside the Toyota Corolla, which held the position for two straight years, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said Friday.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 5, 2003

Tokyo's fastest copywriter on the run for TELL

Bob Poulson is a runner. He runs for fun, and when a good cause comes along that he believes is worth running for, he will run for that too.
JAPAN
Apr 4, 2003

Police more trigger-happy in 2002: NPA

Police officers brandished or fired their guns 54 times in 2002, well up from 26 the previous year and marking the highest number of such incidents in five years, the National Police Agency said Thursday.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 3, 2003

Kansai robots on march amid Astro Boy hoopla

OSAKA -- The Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum in Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture, is witnessing a surge in visitors ahead of the April 7 "birthday" of Astro Boy, the humanoid robot for which the late cartoonist is probably best known.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Apr 2, 2003

Carbon molecule inspires hope in medicine, energy sectors

In the liver or even the brain of a cancer patient, carbon molecules shaped like soccer balls seek out malignant cells and bombard them with anticancer drugs.
COMMENTARY
Apr 2, 2003

Caught between Iraq and a North Korean hard place

When the war between the U.S.-British coalition and Iraq finally began on March 20, a Japanese magazine put out a special issue headlined "The Realization of Justice or Arousal of the Devil?" to stress the importance of looking through to the essence of the war.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 2, 2003

Koizumi's power appears to be slipping

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has gone from bypassing his party's power brokers to pleading with them -- unsuccessfully.
JAPAN
Apr 1, 2003

Resignation of farm minister could be a slow-burning fuse

The sudden resignation Monday of farm minister Tadamori Oshima is a further blow to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, already fighting battles over public opinion and his handling of the economy.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 1, 2003

Miura case came to define sensationalism

In January 1984, more than two years after his wife was gunned down in a Los Angeles parking lot, a major weekly newsmagazine began a series of articles titled "Bullet of suspicion," suggesting Kazuyoshi Miura arranged his wife's murder for the insurance money.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Mar 31, 2003

The economics of friendly fire

Friendly fire is a terrible thing to be a casualty of. But such things happen in the battlefield. As has indeed been happening in the Iraqi war zone.
COMMENTARY
Mar 31, 2003

Debt owed to those inclined to be soldiers

WASHINGTON -- Americans have grown used to nearly costless wars. The New York Times headlined one story: "Invading Forces Capture Key Bridge -- More American Deaths." It left readers to ponder which was the more interesting news nugget -- that a bridge was taken, or that U.S. soldiers died taking it....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 30, 2003

An artist drawing on peace

Yoshitomo Nara is one of Japan's most popular contemporary artists, with admirers not only in Japan but also in Europe and the United States.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 30, 2003

Behind the silver screen

THE FLASH OF CAPITAL: Film and Geopolitics in Japan, by Eric Cazdyn. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2002, 316 pp., $21.95 (paper) Those who dislike that branch of criticism and cultural studies that has come to be known as "theory" will probably not care for Eric Cazdyn's "The Flash of Capital:...
BUSINESS
Mar 29, 2003

Millea Insurance companies finally announce merger

After a series of false starts, the companies of the Millea Insurance Group on Friday officially announced their merger, which will take place in October 2004.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 29, 2003

Age of shifting coalitions

LONDON -- Despite the failure to gain backing from the United Nations, the war on Iraq has brought together a growing "coalition of the willing," as Washington dubs those who support the attack on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. It may have few active military members -- the United States, Britain plus...
JAPAN
Mar 29, 2003

Hoya ordered to halt misleading ads for eyeglasses

The Fair Trade Commission said Friday it has ordered eyeglass manufacturer Hoya Corp. to stop making misleading claims about its products.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 28, 2003

With Hu comes a hint of interesting times

HAINAN, China -- The 3,000-plus delegates to the annual two-week meeting of China's National People's Congress, or NPC, have packed their bags and gone home. It was an unusually important meeting this year. In addition to the usual rubber-stamping of the Chinese Communist Party's policy proposals for...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 28, 2003

Musical is well-suited to the times

"Can we sing a song of peace in a world that's full of fear?"

Longform

Dangami House is a 180-year-old former samurai residence of the Kato clan, who ruled over Ozu, Ehime Prefecture, until the Meiji Restoration.
A house, a legacy and the quiet work of restoration in rural Japan