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LIFE / Style & Design
Mar 16, 2000

Want to know your fortune? Go fish

In the West you might scan your tea leaves for a peek at what the future may hold, but in Japan you are more likely to grab your chopsticks (OK, mouse) for the latest craze -- sushi fortunetelling.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 8, 2000

Educating girls means better lives for all

Shalina is a Bangladeshi girl who is about to finish school. But for Shalina, there will be no pre-exam jitters, no university applications, no diplomas, no career plans. There will not even be a graduation. Shalina is 13, and she is about to join 73 million school-age girls around the world who are...
LIFE / Travel
Feb 9, 2000

New Zealand lunkers rise to flies

Few places in the world rival the South Island of New Zealand either for superb fly fishing or for stunning scenery, and the Ahuriri River in the Canterbury District is the sort of place every fly-fisherman who hasn't been wants to go to, and where those who have been long to return.
LIFE
Feb 3, 2000

Harvesting the world's profusion

"In Japanese, we call that shrub an asebi," says botanist and potter Gufudo Watanabe. Without a pause, the sinewy man with the graying goatee tells me the two other common names in Japanese, the Latin name (Pieris japonica) and the English common name (Japanese andromeda).
CULTURE / Books
Jan 18, 2000

Feminist and dutiful daughter

MIRROR: The Fiction and Essays of Koda Aya, by Ann Sherif. Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 1999, 224 pp., $42 (cloth), $16.95 (paper). Koda Aya (1904-1990), the youngest daughter of the Meiji novelist Koda Rohan, began her writing career late, after the death of her famous father. Her first works,...
LIFE
Jan 6, 2000

Lives spent in high and low places

Having recently returned from six months in a monastery in Tibet, Ruriko Hino is eager to talk about how she first became interested in devoting her life to the study of Tibetan Buddhism and eventually to becoming a Buddhist nun. "I was 19 years old, and working in a hostess bar," she says, making a...
JAPAN
Dec 29, 1999

Aum trials tail off as Asahara's day nears

While the trial of Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara has proceeded at a snail's pace, with prosecutors examining only nine out of the 17 counts that he faces to date, his disciples' trials have entered their final stages before the district court.
JAPAN
Dec 29, 1999

Chronology of cultists' legal battles

The following is a 1999 chronology of trial proceedings and other developments involving key Aum Shinrikyo defendants: Feb. 16: The Tokyo District Court sentences Hisako Ishii, 39, a close aide of cult founder Shoko Asahara, to 44 months in prison for abetting the flight of three cult fugitives wanted...
COMMUNITY
Oct 27, 1999

A walk through the Kyoto antiques district

KYOTO -- Long a Mecca for fans of Japanese antiques, Kyoto is more enticing than ever these days. Unscathed by the bombs of World War II, old family storehouses continue to yield a small but steady stream of somewhat dusty delights, while a host of new shops plying the antiquity trade promises something...
JAPAN
Oct 19, 1999

Japan's biggest nonlife insurer scheduled for 2002

Marine & Fire Insurance Co., Nippon Fire & Marine Insurance Co. and Koa Fire & Marine Insurance Co. formally announced Tuesday they will form a holding company by April 2002 to create the nation's largest nonlife insurer.
COMMENTARY
Oct 2, 1999

Blair touts 'the vision thing'

LONDON -- Watching British Prime Minister Tony Blair is like watching a religious phenomenon. He has stepped off his platform on the backs of members of the Labor Party and has ascended into the clouds, where he hopes to be borne along by the rushing winds of the future. As he lifts off, he kicks away...
COMMUNITY
Oct 2, 1999

Grains of water and drops of sand

Every day, when the beach is quiet, a small figure can be seen walking on the sands of Hayama, gazing at the waves. She is Reika Iwami, an artist whose work is in museums in Britain and America, and who is only now, at the age of 72, becoming better known at home.
CULTURE / Art
Jul 1, 1999

Wood blocks carved from nostalgia

Tsuzen Nakajima's woodblock prints trigger memories in the same way certain melodies or particular scenes may whisk us back to pleasant moments of the past. Nakajima depicts the landscapes of Japan and often uses geta, Japanese umbrellas or tatami rooms as his subjects, complementing those backgrounds...
JAPAN
Jun 24, 1999

Recession not sole cause of suicide

All Daisuke Tajima could think about was ending it all. One day the 49-year-old salaried worker walked out of his office in a city in northern Japan, and for weeks his family had no clue as to his whereabouts.
JAPAN
Jun 10, 1999

Aoba posts first fiscal year earnings

Aoba Life Insurance Co. logged premium revenues totaling 64.9 billion yen for fiscal 1998 ended March 31, the firm said in its first full-year earnings reports, released Thursday.
JAPAN
Jun 7, 1999

New Toho Mutual team to probe liability of execs

The newly appointed administrators of the failed Toho Mutual Life Insurance Co. said Monday they will set up an internal committee to investigate if the firm's management is liable for its collapse.
CULTURE / Art
Feb 20, 1999

Exposing the illusion of appearance

Photographer Duane Michals was born into an odd sort of duality in 1932. He was raised in McKeesport, Penn., by devoutly Catholic parents of Czech origin (much like Andy Warhol, whom he would later depict in a series of blurred portraits). Michals' mother, worked as a housekeeper for a rich family, and...
JAPAN
Dec 2, 1998

Seeking Refuge: Process not worth it, chosen one says

Second in a three-part series on Japan's refugee policy
JAPAN
Jul 1, 1998

High court acquits Miura of L.A. murder scandal

Kazuyoshi Miura was freed Wednesday after being acquitted by the Tokyo High Court of conspiring to murder his wife in 1981 to cash in on her life insurance policies.
JAPAN
May 15, 1998

Insurers plan study of Aoba buyout by AIG

Japan's life insurance industry body gave the green light Friday to begin a preliminary study into whether Aoba Life Insurance Co. might be sold to U.S. insurance giant American International Group Inc.
JAPAN
Nov 5, 1997

Courts pressured on death penalty

Prosecutors have submitted an opinion to the Supreme Court claiming that rulings by lower courts in a 1991 double murder case in Hokkaido, in which the defendant was sentenced to life in prison, violated the common law standards of the death penalty, it was learned Wednesday.
JAPAN
Sep 19, 1997

Hokkaido Takushoku urged to seek local backing

Troubled Hokkaido Takushoku Bank should first look for support from local business circles in increasing its capital, the president of Asahi Mutual Life Insurance Co. said Sept. 19.
JAPAN
Aug 28, 1997

ORIX unveils 'cheap' insurance

ORIX Life Insurance Corp. will introduce Sept. 1 what it calls "unprecedented cheap" life insurance products available only through mail order, the firm announced August 28.
JAPAN
Jul 18, 1997

Insurance group won't push failed firm on dealings

The new chairman of the Life Insurance Association of Japan said July 18 that the group will only question the responsibility of the former management of insolvent Nissan Mutual Life Insurance Co. if a legal violation is uncovered.
JAPAN
Jun 10, 1997

Midsize insurers' sales drop 4.6%

The combined revenues from premiums at the nation's eight medium-size life insurers for the year that ended in March came to 6.045 trillion yen, a drop of 4.6 percent from the previous year, business reports showed June 10.
JAPAN
May 19, 1997

Nissan Motor offers jobs, not money to aid failed insurer

Instead of providing a large sum of financial support to deal with the failure of Nissan Mutual Life Insurance Co., Nissan Motor Corp. is ready to accept the insurance company's employees, the president of Nissan Motor said May 19.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 14, 2023

Cormac McCarthy, novelist of a darker America, is dead at 89

His characters were outsiders, like him. He lived quietly and determinately outside the literary mainstream.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 20, 2023

Inside Hiroshima's Atomic Bomb Dome: Broadcaster taps tech to keep history alive

As each year passes, memories of the atomic bombing fade. With that in mind, NHK is using VR and AI to offer interactive experiences that will withstand the test of time.
Japan Times
Special Supplements / Hiroshima G7 Summit Special
May 19, 2023

Old horses thrown lifelines as new competitions grow

Opportunities for retired racehorses to play active roles have been steadily, if gradually, increasing.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 7, 2023

When we were kings: What Shakespeare says about being No. 1

Charles’s crowning is religious pantomime, dramatizing the special relationship between the divine and the head of the royal family — and, by extension, with Britain itself.

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