Search - u_times

 
 
EDITORIALS
May 27, 2002

A mature investor-creditor nation

The history of modern Japan's manufacturing is emblematic of the nation's industrial growth since 1868 when it opened its doors to the West. The long-term goal was to catch up with the world's industrialized powers. Achieving that aim required that resources-poor Japan earn precious foreign exchange...
COMMENTARY / World
May 27, 2002

Learn to write better by reading the experts

"My dear Professor," reads a note I received about two weeks ago, "I've found your Japan Times editorial-page commentary most interesting. You say writing good English is more craft than art -- a craft that anyone can learn. But I don't think it's always the case." In the first place, continues the three-paragraph...
EDITORIALS
May 26, 2002

A dash of sugar, a heap of confusion

Winston Churchill called it his "black dog." British medical biologist Lewis Wolpert has described it as "the cancer of the emotions." Once known politely as melancholia, it is more often referred to these days as clinical depression, and it has been estimated that as many as two-thirds of sufferers,...
COMMENTARY / World
May 26, 2002

Candidate of Kim's party in tough race

SEOUL -- Roh Moo Hyun, the recently anointed presidential candidate of Kim Dae Jung's Millennium Democratic party, or MDP, for December's elections, has been on a roll this spring. A relative political unknown, he succeeded in toppling his party's front-runner for the nomination, Rhee In Je, while generating...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
May 26, 2002

Waxing monstrously about the first Japanese I ever got to know

The first Japanese I fell in love with was a little taller than my wife.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / NIHONSHU
May 26, 2002

Romancing the sake rice

With wine, it's all about the grape, and this leads to boundless potential for conversation and enjoyment above and beyond flavors and aromas.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
May 26, 2002

Where to get your kicks

As Japan braces itself for the influx of soccer fans, the media is keeping a careful eye on potential hot spots -- including Roppongi, Tokyo's gaijin HQ. Though no World Cup matches will be played inside Tokyo, Roppongi is expected to take the brunt of post-game soccer fans out to celebrate their wins...
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 25, 2002

Secret funds have oiled wheels for decades

The practice of using the Cabinet secretariat's discretionary funds for "Diet affairs" -- buying off both ruling camp and opposition lawmakers to ensure important legislation gets passed smoothly -- dates back decades, according to Upper House member Sadao Hirano.
JAPAN
May 25, 2002

Banks' bad loans increase 47% to record 27 trillion yen

Despite coughing up a record 7.57 trillion yen to cover credit costs, Japan's major banks were unable to make a dent in the size of their bad loans, which shot up 47.4 percent from a year earlier to a record 27 trillion yen, according to fiscal 2001 earnings results released Friday.
JAPAN
May 24, 2002

Pesticide found in spinach at Jonathan's restaurants

Illegally high levels of pesticide residue have been found in frozen spinach imported from China and used by the Jonathan's restaurant chain, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government announced Thursday.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 24, 2002

Japanese women staying in touch with their inner virgin

What with the rise of the strong and professional Japanese woman, it may have escaped your notice. But the nation is currently undergoing a quiet boom in otome (innocent young girl) culture, to which a large number of aforementioned strong professionals are addicted.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
May 23, 2002

Scientists petition Japan to lay down harpoons

Early this week, readers of the New York Times may have been surprised to find among its pages a full-page petition, in English and Japanese, signed by 21 eminent scientists, including Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson and Jane Lubchenco, and the Nobel prize-winners Roger Guillemin, Sir Aaron Klug and Alan...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 22, 2002

Theo Bleckmann and Ben Monder

Vocalist Theo Bleckmann only occasionally sings in an identifiable language, a trait that reinforces the impression that he is of another world, a messenger graced with an ethereal sense of beauty and a childlike fascination for exploring the unknown. His style is evocative and beckoning rather than...
SOCCER / World cup / COHOSTING
May 21, 2002

Struggling to shake off the demons

After solving the issue of what the 2002 World Cup would be called in Japanese -- by removing the two countries' names -- FIFA no doubt hoped that the organization of the tournament would proceed without any further hiccups.
EDITORIALS
May 20, 2002

Regrets and resolutions

The Foreign Ministry's latest annual report reads partly like a litany of resolutions. That is only to be expected given the series of incidents and scandals that have hit the foreign service over the past year or so. Naturally, the blue book, as the report is commonly known, calls for a string of steps...
COMMENTARY / JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL ERA
May 20, 2002

Parochialism produces few world leaders

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- Following the appearance of one of the recent articles in this series on Japan in the global era, a colleague of mine, Dominique Turpin, who has been doing research on Japanese industry for some 20 years, came into my office and said, "Jean-Pierre, when are you going to start...
BASEBALL / MLB
May 20, 2002

Hasegawa right at home in Mariners' bullpen

TORONTO -- Seven years after Hideo Nomo's debut with the Los Angeles Dodgers, seeing a native of Japan play Major League Baseball is no longer a novelty.
JAPAN / WHALE WATCHING
May 19, 2002

IWC talks crucial, U.S. official says

The international whaling meeting that opens Monday is the most important in 15 years, and its outcome is as hard to predict as it is significant, according to the head of the U.S. delegation.
JAPAN
May 19, 2002

Japan rethinks plan for permanent U.N. Security Council seat

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, Japan has been forced to review its diplomatic strategy for gaining a long-coveted permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
ENVIRONMENT
May 19, 2002

What the label doesn't say

Scandals about deception in product labeling have been in the news of late, with both the expiry dates and the origins of dairy and meat products called into question. While not as big a news item, the labeling standards for whale meat take deception to further, murkier depths -- and to dangerous ones....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 19, 2002

A lost textile art gains ascendancy

THE WORLD OF ROZOME: Wax-Resist Textiles of Japan, by Betsy Sterling Benjamin. Kodansha International, 2002, 224 pp., $49.95 (paper) If the art of "rozome" (wax-resist dyeing) were a moon in the sky, it would be full and glowing brightly. Having waned in importance as a textile-patterning process at...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 19, 2002

Swingin' from Paris to Austin

Since authenticity is an important consideration for the Hot Club of Cowtown, the Austin, Texas, trio who play a mix of Western swing and hot jazz, it's easy to locate them on the musical map. Western swing was mostly invented and popularized by the legendary Bob Wills in the '30s and '40s in Texas,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / VINELAND
May 19, 2002

Where the adventure begins

Wine complements all sorts of moods. At times, it is convivial. We share a bottle around the table, and our group of friends become merrier, the conversation seasoned with laughter. Yet wine can also nourish quiet contemplation. Sip a glass alone or with one other person (a beloved, perhaps), and then...
JAPAN / Media
May 19, 2002

'Sakura' -- or 'E.T. Comes to Japan'

One of the staples of Japanese daytime television for more than four decades has been the NHK Renzoku Terebii Shosetsu (serialized television novel), broadcast six days per week, Monday through Saturday, from 8:15 to 8:30 a.m. Begun in 1961, each "novel" runs for 26 or 52 weeks.
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....
ENVIRONMENT
May 19, 2002

How deep does our knowledge go?

The group of animals we call cetaceans represent but two-thirds of the orders of "whales" that have ever existed.
COMMENTARY / World
May 18, 2002

Koizumi overplays his hand in Shenyang

BEIJING -- There is a sharp contrast between Japan and China on how they have handled the incident of North Korean asylum-seekers in Japan's Shenyang consulate general. While Beijing has taken a low-key approach, Tokyo has blown the whole matter into crisis proportion, creating a nationwide sensation...

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