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JAPAN
Sep 6, 2003

Marunouchi Building to adopt ETC system for car park

Mitsubishi Estate Co. and trading house Mitsubishi Corp. have said they will jointly install an electronic toll collection system in the Marunouchi Building parking lot Saturday, the structure's first anniversary.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Sep 4, 2003

On the book trail

A Single Shard, by LINDA SUE PARK, Clarion Books; 2002; 160 pp. If recent children's books are any indication, we might be led to believe that boy-wizards who fight evil and that children lucky enough to embark on wild adventures exist only in Britain or the United States. In fact, why does almost every...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Sep 3, 2003

Roy Hargrove

What's a nice, clean-cut hard-bopping trumpeter, one of the best to hit the jazz scene in the '90s, doing growing dreadlocks, wearing baggy pants and making a funk-soul CD?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 3, 2003

The Plan finally disbands, but the dialogue continues

Last January, The Dismemberment Plan announced that after 10 years, four well-received albums and countless tours that earned them a reputation for being one of the most consistently exciting live acts on the planet they were calling it quits.
Japan Times
JAPAN / AFTER 2 1/2 YEARS
Sep 1, 2003

Koizumi renews confrontational posture

When he became prime minister in April 2001, Junichiro Koizumi boasted high public support, portraying himself as a lone wolf fighting old-guard politicians in the Liberal Democratic Party.
COMMUNITY
Aug 24, 2003

The curious afterlife of Ada Lovelace

Celebrity is a fickle thing, as Ada Lovelace's famous father, the poet Lord Byron, learned to his cost -- sexual scandals and seesawing public opinion drove him into exile and to his death. For his daughter, however, the ups and downs of fame have mostly been posthumous.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 24, 2003

Should Japanese history be rewritten?

HARING THE BURDEN OF THE PAST: Legacies of War in Europe, America and Asia, edited by Andrew Horvat and Gebhard Hielscher. Tokyo: The Asia Foundation & Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2003, 341 pp., 1,000 yen (paper). The legacies of war continue to dog Japan and are divisive at home and in Asia. Despite the...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 15, 2003

Baron of porn spills it all

HONG KONG -- His pictures beamed across the nation's television stations and front pages of all of its newspapers from down market tabloids to sober-sided broadsheets: the grin on his face was as wide as a melon and he held, fanlike, a huge wad of currency notes for all the world, like a television game...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 6, 2003

Rough Trade Shops: "Post Punk 01"

When punk hit a recession-ridden U.K. in 1975-'76, using a rudimentary version of rock 'n' roll as a platform to scream obscenities and threaten to smash the state, it was enough to ignite outrage across the land. And then, before your grandfather could curse "They should bring back military service,"...
BUSINESS
Aug 5, 2003

Takefuji sanctions negligible: S&P

Standard & Poor's said Monday that the Finance Ministry's administrative sanctions on Takefuji Corp. will have only a slight impact on the firm's ratings.
BUSINESS
Aug 5, 2003

Task force targets pension system shirkers

The welfare ministry and the Social Insurance Agency have launched a task force to help resolve the problem of unpaid national pension premiums in a bid to restore trust in the system, government officials said Monday.
COMMENTARY
Aug 4, 2003

Get real about the Iraq war

LONDON -- Supporters of the war against Iraq have a point: The row in Britain about the "evidence" of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's deadly intentions toward the West is more froth than substance.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 3, 2003

Out of time

At the age of 18 I fled suburbia, tripping into the dusty corrupting enlightenment of the bloody Vietnam War, like an Alice in an evil wonderland, never to return. Simply put, I was sent to Vietnam to defend a lie, to destroy those (the totalitarian commie "them") who dared oppose the "greatest nation"...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 3, 2003

Visitors to stay -- for the time being

GLOBAL JAPAN: The experience of Japan's new immigrant and overseas communities, edited by Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka and Paul White. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, 241 pp., £65, (cloth). Many in Japan have been slow to accept the fact that international labor migration does...
COMMENTARY
Jul 30, 2003

Unwise cuts in Japan studies

LONDON -- Information about Japan and Japanese culture was regrettably limited and unsophisticated for many years after World War II. Influential people in Britain, such as the late Sir Peter Parker, realized that the ignorance and prejudices of British people about Japan were damaging British interests...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 27, 2003

So much to soak up in Yamagata

OK, let me put this out there: Yamagata-ken, just like any sensible prefecture in Japan, loves tourists. But you get the feeling that Yamagata Prefecture Tourist Division tries a little harder to promote its treasures. They even occasionally invite journalists up for a spin around the countryside.
JAPAN
Jul 25, 2003

Government plans exhaustive program to research protein

The government will launch a five-year national research program to analyze the interaction of human proteins as a new scientific goal following the completion of the human genome map in April, science ministry officials said Thursday.
BUSINESS
Jul 25, 2003

Cash dries up amid pension plan fears

The ratio of people who failed to pay national pension premiums hit a record-high 37.2 percent in fiscal 2002, surpassing the previous record of 29.1 percent in fiscal 2001, the Social Insurance Agency said Thursday.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 20, 2003

Taking readers to the edge

RUNNERS IN THE MARGINS: Poems by Akira Tatehata, translated by Hiroaki Sato. Vermont: P.S A Press, 2003, 103 pp., $12.95 (paper) The poet Akira Tatehata has a wide-ranging imagination as rich, and yet as controlled, as the brush of the most delicate artist. His poems are sometimes playful, sometimes...
JAPAN
Jul 18, 2003

Tax scandal hits posts ministry affiliate group

An association affiliated with the posts ministry hid about 420 million yen in income over two years, sources said Thursday.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / THEN AND NOW
Jul 17, 2003

Exploring a once bleak, medieval upland

In 1601 Tokugawa Ieyasu established a nationwide highway network radiating from Edo and designated post stations on the roads to serve the needs of travelers. Shinagawa, on the city's southwestern perimeter, was the first of these post stations on the Todaido, the most frequented route between Edo and...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 16, 2003

In your nightmares . . .

"In Room 101 is the worst thing in the world," Winston Smith's torturer told the defiant hero of George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984." Now, rooms 1-4 of the Bridgestone Museum of Art's temporary exhibition galleries are hosting a whole array of the world's "worst things."
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 15, 2003

Hold the fort

Over dinner not long ago, I noticed a friend wasn't wearing one of his prized antique wristwatches.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 13, 2003

Join the club: Today's Japanese fads

THE IMAGE FACTORY: Fads & Fashions in Japan, by Donald Richie, photographs by Roy Garner. London: Reaktion Books, 2003, 176 pp., £14.95 (cloth). Fads and fashions are not, of course, exclusively Japanese. Still, the unself-conscious abandon with which fads and fashions are adopted in Japan assures that...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Jul 13, 2003

Out of the way, but never too far

After S'ayak has the disadvantage of being somewhat difficult to find. It is tucked away in a dark alley off a relatively well-patronized neighborhood shopping street lined with many cool little sake bars and eateries. You have to know it's there to find it.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Jul 9, 2003

Goro Suzuki: Honored to live in his time

Wrapped in flickering candlelight, koto master Tamiko Asai spoke to the audience in a hushed voice:
COMMENTARY
Jul 5, 2003

Tony Blair: a casualty of war

LONDON -- As the grim business of policing a vanquished Iraq drags on, it seems less and less likely that Prime Minister Tony Blair's authority over party and country will survive. For the first time since Labour's landslide victory in 1997 the Conservatives are nudging ahead of Labour in opinion polls...
JAPAN / KANSAI BEAT
Jul 4, 2003

Shop redefines the sound bite

KYOTO -- Enter the little shop in Kyoto's Higashiyama Ward and the world unfolds through sound -- the sounds collected around the world, such as ice melting off a glacier, snarling Bangkok traffic, beetles mating, a rhinoceros breaking wind and the silence of a Patagonian plain interrupted by a flying...
Japan Times
JAPAN / IN WITH THE NEW
Jul 3, 2003

For security realists, Ishiba a breath of clear air

Since becoming Defense Agency chief, Shigeru Ishiba has not been shy about rocking the boat.

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