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Japan Times
Uncategorized
Oct 26, 2002

Japan shares its antipollution expertise

The city of Kitakyushu has moved ahead of other municipalities in transferring Japan's industrial knowledge and technology -- including measures to combat pollution -- to developing countries.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 24, 2002

'Tax evaders' steal the talk of Shanghai

SEOUL -- A little over a month ago I was on the way to Shanghai to spend a month teaching at Fudan University. I read an article in a Hong Kong newspaper that said the topic on everyone's lips in China was the upcoming 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. This is the congress at which...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Oct 17, 2002

Searching within ourselves for the vaccine against HIV

It is 2005, in what was formerly the state of California. After a massive earthquake, the golden state has been divided into two: So. Cal and No. Cal. Scrawled and sprayed on walls and wreckage is the name of the people's savior: J.D. Shapely.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 2002

Koizumi almost pulls it off

SHANGHAI, China -- My perspective for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to North Korea is that of the Chinese. I have been in Shanghai since just before his visit. The reports I have been reading and listening to are those of the Chinese media and my Chinese friends and colleagues.
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 6, 2002

Yukio Ninagawa: visionary player on the world's stage

Internationally acclaimed theater director Yukio Ninagawa has staged countless plays in Japan, elsewhere in Asia, and in the United States and Europe.
JAPAN
Sep 24, 2002

Cloud of population decline may have silver lining

"Rabbit hutch" is a stereotypical term coined years ago by outsiders referring the cramped dwellings of crowded, urban Japan.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 22, 2002

Veteran builder lives his art

Toshio Konuma, 43, is a Japanese bodybuilding legend. He started training at 17 and entered his first competition two years later. He won that, and he's been winning ever since. In 1985, he scaled the pinnacle of Japanese competition, capturing the Mr. Nihon title. Then he won it again in 1987, and held...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 21, 2002

Myanmar's SPDC must honor its word

Visits to Myanmar by United Nations Special Envoy Ismail Razali and Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi ended in hopes that change would take place. Unfortunately, however, Myanmar's generals have shown no sign of turning their words into action, and the country's situation continues to deteriorate. If...
COMMENTARY
Sep 17, 2002

When to 'sup with the devil'

LONDON -- Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will pay an official visit to North Korea this week, where he will meet with dictator Kim Jong Il. He wants to deal with a number of issues between Japan and North Korea, including Pyongyang's abduction of Japanese nationals. No doubt Koizumi would also like...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 8, 2002

Back to the old house to raise our spirits

Japan likes to present itself as the world's shining example of rapid economic development, the "postwar miracle." The government's extensive overseas development aid is more than just the gesture of noblesse oblige expected of the world's No. 2 economic power. It is an assertion of everything that is...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 7, 2002

Sept. 11 boosts Japan's interest in Islam

As kimono-clad people danced through the streets of the Minami Otsuka district of northern Tokyo during a summer festival last month, a small Pakistani curry stall was doing a roaring trade.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 5, 2002

Lofty words with little impact

CAMBRIDGE, England -- As I write, the world's leaders, well most of them -- U.S. President George W. Bush is too busy clearing his desk after a month's holiday -- are lining up to make their speeches at the Johannesburg global conference on sustainable development.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 4, 2002

No fear of flying

"There's no such thing as improvisation," the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia once said. "There's only composition. Only you do it quickly; you're composing on the spot."
CULTURE / Film / CLOSE-UP
Sep 1, 2002

Films, Zen, Japan

Donald Richie is regarded as the leading Western authority on Japanese film. He first came to Japan in 1947 as a civilian typist for the U.S. Occupational forces -- an intelligent, restless 22-year-old in search of purpose.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / CLOSE-UP
Sep 1, 2002

Films, Zen, Japan

Donald Richie is regarded as the leading Western authority on Japanese film. He first came to Japan in 1947 as a civilian typist for the U.S. Occupational forces -- an intelligent, restless 22-year-old in search of purpose.
COMMENTARY / World / GUEST FORUM
Aug 31, 2002

Reactions to 9/11 as scary as the attacks

For my friend Azusa, it was supposed to be a long-waited vacation in New York City. Despite a big autumn typhoon, her Continental Air flight to Newark took off from Narita on time at 4 p.m. and she began to doze off, expecting a long flight to the East Coast as usual.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Aug 31, 2002

Fear and loathing in XXL Las Vegas

The combination of classic American kitsch and the Japanese love for it makes Las Vegas a mandatory stop on any Japanese person's tour of the U.S. This is how I find myself in Las Vegas now with two Japanese home stay students.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Aug 29, 2002

Japan and U.K. forge new green links

NAGANO -- Last weekend in Johannesburg, 65,000 people were limbering up for the U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development.
BUSINESS
Aug 21, 2002

Employee-leasing agencies helping Chinese computer engineers to cash in

More Chinese computer engineers are coming to Japan via temporary-staff employment agencies, and some of them are finding a niche in the information technology industry, earning as much as 10 million yen a year.
JAPAN
Aug 6, 2002

Glitches, protest greet launch of resident registry network

The government on Monday launched a national resident registry network that encodes people's personal information and gives everyone an 11-digit number. But glitches emerged, some municipalities refused to go online and critics cried "Big Brother."
JAPAN
Aug 6, 2002

Maestro hopes to energize, inspire, connect with Asian youths on tour

Bright Sheng has just finished a 3-hour rehearsal with the Asian Youth Orchestra in Hong Kong. You can detect a hint of tiredness in his voice, but it's overlaid with a definite tone of achievement, and excitement even, for what lies ahead.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 1, 2002

Isles trampled in white elephant stampede

Japan's islands have long been a source of tearful TV documentaries that focus on aging populations and families abandoned by children who have left for the cities.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 17, 2002

It takes a village . . .

The feat of building a community takes vision, commitment and lots of time. But once every year, a massive village materializes on a mountainside in Niigata Prefecture in late July, only to vanish into thin air less than a week later.
JAPAN
Jul 16, 2002

Dentists prosper from quest for winning smile

An increasing number of people -- especially young women -- are visiting dental clinics. They're not having cavities drilled, but having their teeth whitened.
COMMENTARY
Jul 11, 2002

China holds Taiwan independence card

HONG KONG -- Beijing's unremitting struggle to keep Taiwan from straying onto the independence path continues unabated, with Lions Club International, or LCI, providing the latest battleground.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 8, 2002

Legacy-building in Beijing

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Chinese President Jiang Zemin has made another speech -- another important speech -- adding gloss to the landmark speech he made July 1 last year at the Communist Party of China's 80th birthday party.
COMMENTARY / JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL ERA
Jul 8, 2002

Great country; pity about the institutions

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- My good friend Philippe Pons, the Japan correspondent for the leading French daily Le Monde, wrote an excellent article, "Au Japon, la crise n'est pas ce que l'on croit" (In Japan, the crisis is not what people think), for the newspaper's June 19 edition. Pons rectifies many...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 4, 2002

Reserved but hardly remote

The June 8 article "A right royal celebration," by former British Ambassador to Japan Sir Hugh Cortazzi, described the Golden Jubilee celebration for Queen Elizabeth II. I was happy to read that the celebration was a great success, that the respect and affection of the British people for the queen were...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 3, 2002

Program empowers disabled Asians

Lokesh Khadka, a 23-year-old deaf Nepalese, is determined to change the society of his home country so that it will accept people with hearing disabilities.

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan