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SUMO
Jun 15, 2006

With Wailing Walls and Dead Sea dips, who needs the World Cup?

Sumo, unlike football -- (the proper one as opposed to the pads and helmet version) -- never stops.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 6, 2006

Murakami arrested over insider trading

Outspoken investment fund manager Yoshiaki Murakami was arrested Monday for alleged insider trading linked to his investment fund's purchase of Nippon Broadcasting System Inc. shares between late 2004 and early 2005.
COMMENTARY
May 12, 2006

Fixing the freedom to move

LONDON -- Recent marches in the United States by Latin Americans calling for some 12 million illegal immigrants to be given the right to reside and work in "the land of the free" are the most striking manifestation of a problem that affects every advanced country, although the issue is disguised in Japan....
EDITORIALS
May 8, 2006

Bracing for a new level of oil prices

Oil prices hovering at a historically high level are threatening to destabilize the world economy. Domestically they could exert a cooling effect on the economy just as it appears to be emerging from a long period of deflation, thus undermining the foundation for economic recovery. The public is now...
EDITORIALS
Apr 26, 2006

Learning from Chernobyl

At 1:23 a.m. on April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear-power accident in history occurred at Chernobyl, Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union. Twenty years after the accident, the name "Chernobyl" and a view of the 90-meter-high concrete and steel sarcophagus covering Reactor Four at the power...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Apr 26, 2006

A voice of reason countering Big Oil's clout

The United States government may be hemorrhaging money in Iraq, but the financial condition of America's oil companies and their top management couldn't be rosier.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 16, 2006

Myths and misconceptions on Chernobyl

LONDON -- The 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident of April 26, 1986, is prompting a new wave of alarmist claims about its impact on human health and the environment. As has become a ritual on such commemorative occasions, the death toll is tallied in the hundreds of thousands, and fresh...
COMMENTARY
Apr 8, 2006

Pack journalism can be lethal

Some call it pack journalism. It is also lazy journalism.
JAPAN
Mar 26, 2006

Foreign Ministry kept contracted studies secret

The Foreign Ministry has refrained from disclosing 58 percent of the research projects it commissioned from affiliated organizations or outside experts since 2002 due to confidentiality reasons, an internal ministry document showed Saturday.
COMMENTARY
Feb 6, 2006

Containing a growing divide

The growing economic gap in Japanese society under Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's reform policy is emerging as a major national political issue. Critics in the opposition camp as well as the ruling coalition charge that deregulation and intensified competition have divided society into winners and...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 4, 2006

New auto jobs, not quotas

WASHINGTON -- U.S. automakers are in dire straits. While non-U.S. brands are gaining market share, both GM and Ford have announced major plant closings and substantial layoffs. For some, these announcements have raised the specter of a return to the policies of the 1980s, when the United States imposed...
JAPAN
Feb 1, 2006

'Gender-free' hard to define, harder to sell

Last year's cancellation of lectures on human rights in Kokubunji, Tokyo, has pitted key feminist scholar Chizuko Ueno and free-speech advocates against conservatives in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government opposed to the use of "gender-free" -- a term whose definition varies but somehow conjures up negative...
OLYMPICS
Jan 31, 2006

Blogs by Olympics participants to be banned

The Japanese Olympic Committee is telling athletes competing at the Turin Winter Olympic Games not to open web logs because the Olympic Charter bans athletes' journalist activities when the games are on, and violators will be disqualified.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 24, 2006

Cross-eyed over abuses by North Korea

HONOLULU -- Among the policy differences dividing the United States and South Korea, one that stands out is divergence over the issue of North Korea's abuses of the human rights of its own citizens.
COMMENTARY
Jan 23, 2006

The feud can end anytime

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi should realize that he holds the key to settling the growing discord with China even as Beijing adds fuel to the fire by urging the Japanese government to restrict news media reports on the alleged security threat posed by China.
MORE SPORTS
Jan 12, 2006

Battle-ready Nakata turns down shot to play for Israeli club

Japanese international defender Koji Nakata, who is having an unhappy spell at Marseille, said Wednesday he has decided not to join an Israeli club.
EDITORIALS
Jan 3, 2006

Asian democratic tide ebbs

Personal and political freedom is expanding around the globe. Freedom House, a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization that tracks these developments, reports that more people enjoy civil liberties than ever before. As is to be expected, the gains are uneven. Sadly, some of the worst abuses of freedom...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Dec 22, 2005

Looking back on 10 years of yakimono

In the 10 years since this column started, much has changed in the worldwide perception of yakimono, Japanese ceramic art. I'm talking about in the contemporary realm, not antiques. The deep and wide world of contemporary Japanese ceramic art is as varied as there are stars in a brilliant winter night...
JAPAN
Dec 20, 2005

Abused girl a captive almost in plain sight

Amid the string of child murders across Japan in recent weeks, the bizarre story of an 18-year-old girl in Fukuoka Prefecture, allegedly confined almost all her life and beaten by her mother, has all but gone unnoticed.
JAPAN
Dec 1, 2005

Romanian EU entry touted as boon for Japan

Romania's envisioned admission to the European Union in 2007 will benefit not only Europe but Japan as well, giving Japanese goods access to the Southeastern European market, according to Romanian Foreign Minister Mihai-Razvan Ungureanu.
JAPAN
Nov 30, 2005

Charity swim event to aid Thai tsunami orphans

Two foreign athletes who survived the South Asian tsunamis last year will hold a charity swimming event in Thailand on Dec. 24 to raise funds for Thai children who lost parents in the disaster.
EDITORIALS
Nov 30, 2005

China's environmental challenge

Achemical spill on China's Songhua River is a grim reminder of the costs attendant to China's breakneck economic development. The release of toxic chemicals underscores three sets of challenges that China faces as it modernizes: environmental practices of its businesses, government's response to the...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Nov 20, 2005

Inaugural Konami Cup a great way to end the 2005 season

The first Konami Cup Asia Series, held Nov. 10-13 at Tokyo Dome, gets high marks from this chair for its organization, execution and quality of play.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Nov 9, 2005

Valentine's future remains undecided

Based on job offers, Bobby Valentine has just as good a chance to be with the Chiba Lotte Marines next season as he does with the Los Angeles Dodgers or any other club his name has been linked to in recent weeks.
MORE SPORTS
Nov 2, 2005

Super Aguri team applies to join F1

Former Formula One driver Aguri Suzuki, the first Japanese to score a podium finish in a world championship round, said Tuesday a new Honda-backed team has applied to join Formula One from next year.
COMMENTARY
Sep 26, 2005

China should face its own unsavory past

NEW DELHI -- The new foreign-policy subtleness that China has displayed in recent years is a far cry from the coarse image its earlier Communist rulers presented, especially when they set out, in then-Premier Zhou Enlai's words, to "teach India a lesson" in 1962, or when, to quote strongman Deng Xiaoping,...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Sep 25, 2005

Carp may bring in ex-player Brown to try and revive club

Hiroshima Carp manager Koji Yamamoto has announced he will be stepping down at the end of this season, and press reports have indicated the leading candidate to replace him is former Carp infielder-outfielder Marty Brown.
JAPAN
Sep 21, 2005

Japan seeks abduction sincerity in renewed talks

Tokyo and Pyongyang have agreed to resume bilateral talks -- stalled since last November -- to resolve various issues, including the abductions of Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s, Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said Tuesday.

Longform

Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.
The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers