Search - 2003

 
 
JAPAN
Dec 26, 2004

Political parties amassed 319.6 billion yen in donations last year

Political parties raked in 319.6 billion yen in 2003, marking a 10.8 percent rise from 2002 and the first increase in three years, according to a tally of government political fund reports.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 25, 2004

Former LDP lawmaker gets 32 months

The Tokyo District Court sentenced former Diet lawmaker Takanori Sakai to 32 months in prison Friday for not reporting 168 million yen in political donations and defrauding the state out of 24 million yen.
JAPAN
Dec 24, 2004

Public wants sanctions -- but at what price?

A large section of the public responded with predictable fury to recent revelations that a set of remains handed by North Korea to Japanese officials were not, as Pyongyang had claimed, those of abductee Megumi Yokota.
JAPAN
Dec 17, 2004

UFJ chief quizzed over probe block

Prosecutors apparently have questioned UFJ Bank President Takamune Okihara over the bank's obstruction of government inspections in 2003 by allegedly hiding vital documents, investigative sources said Thursday.
EDITORIALS
Nov 15, 2004

Auditors, don't be shy

Every annual report from the Board of Audit (BOA), an independent government body, makes dismal reading -- until you get to the bottom line. The latest says that 43 billion yen in taxpayer money was wasted and misused in fiscal 2003. That is the largest amount in 20 years. The report gives appalling...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 31, 2004

Sweeping view of socio-economic change and continuity in China for a half-century

HUMANISM IN CHINA: A Contemporary Record of Photography, edited by Wang Huangsheng and Hu Wugong. Guandong: Lingnan Meishu Chubanche, 2003, 488 pp., $40 (paper). China is a society in the midst of sweeping socio-economic convulsions that are rapidly and drastically altering the lives of its citizens....
JAPAN
Oct 30, 2004

Opposition parties fail to rattle Koizumi

Attempts by opposition parties to rattle Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi during the ongoing Diet session in connection with political funding reports have proved fruitless.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 23, 2004

Activist arrested for unauthorized pill sales

Police on Friday arrested peace activist Chiyo Takahashi and three other people on suspicion of selling unapproved medicine.
JAPAN
Oct 19, 2004

Fewer unwanted pets perish as lab fodder

The government turned over 734 unwanted animals to research labs for experiments in fiscal 2003, down from more than 100,000 two decades ago, an animal protection and welfare group said Monday.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 17, 2004

Did Kosovo illuminate Iraq?

One of the curious features of the Iraq war last year was the serious split across the Atlantic. And what seemed to puzzle as much as infuriate Americans was why the major European powers, having signed on to war without U.N. authorization in 1999 against Slobodan Milosevic, "the butcher of Belgrade,"...
JAPAN
Oct 15, 2004

Firms lied to get state loans: board

Many small companies that received loans from the state-backed National Life Finance Corp. filed false financial reports and used false identities in applying for loans, Board of Audit officials said Thursday.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Oct 14, 2004

Arias, Petagine, Woods may play musical chairs in offseason

Three foreign players, all first basemen on Central League teams this past season, may be about to embark on a National Football League quarterback-style game of musical chairs.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 9, 2004

Afghanistan three years on

WASHINGTON -- Three years after the Bush administration led a remarkably quick and bold military operation to overthrow the Taliban regime, how are things going in Afghanistan? The short answer is that there has been considerable progress. But that is largely because things were so bad under the Taliban,...
Rugby
Sep 17, 2004

JRFU'S new ruling puts players' lives at risk

At the press conference to launch the start of the second year of the Top League, which kicks-off this weekend, Japan Rugby Football Union Chairman Tetsuo Machii admitted that the game's image had suffered in recent years.
EDITORIALS
Aug 24, 2004

Japan's changing labor structure

Japan's employment situation is improving thanks to the economy's recovery, which in part has been fueled by corporate efforts to deal with changing economic realities. To reduce personnel expenses, companies have been increasingly turning to the recruitment of cheaper "nonregular employees," such as...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 21, 2004

Secondhand personal computer market expanding

The secondhand personal computer market is rapidly expanding as sharp growth in demand for new PCs sends relatively new ones to the used market.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / THE SECOND ROOM
Aug 20, 2004

The Gathering 2004 preview

After dozens of hours of copious, nail-biting research, I have deduced that there is absolutely no connection whatsoever between Respect for the Aged Day and the ending date for Gathering 2004, except that vigorous dancing has been medically proven to reverse the aging process.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 29, 2004

Migrants' remittances home exceed ODA

Elisa Rey puts a wad of yen into a small, brown envelope at her home. Far away in Peru, her monthly remittances -- set aside from her job in an electronics factory south of Tokyo -- have already built a house that few could dream of in her poor suburb of Lima.
CULTURE / Film
Jul 14, 2004

A 'Steamboy' timeline

1995 After enjoying international success with his debut feature "Akira" (1988), Katsuhiro Otomo comes up with the idea for his second feature, "Steamboy," from an animated short, "Cannon Fodder." One of three segments in his 1995 animation omnibus "Memories," "Cannon Fodder" tells an Orwellian tale,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 12, 2004

Death-penalty debate rages anew in India

MADRAS, India -- India is once again hotly debating capital punishment. This time the discussion has been provoked by the death sentence given to Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who was convicted of raping and murdering a 14-year-old schoolgirl. Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has stayed Chatterjee's hanging...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jul 9, 2004

Recovery shows benefits of letting foreigners in

Like many other Japanese investors, Hiroo Sato got burned a decade ago when the nation's speculative bubble burst. These days, he's finally getting some of his money back via a rebounding stock market.
BUSINESS
Jul 2, 2004

Recovery helped state trim bond issuance

The government's issuance of bonds in fiscal 2003 is thought to have been 1.1 trillion yen less than the amount forecast, with the economic recovery having boosted tax revenue, the Finance Ministry said Thursday.
BUSINESS
Jul 1, 2004

Fuso can't get fix on earnings outlook

Scandal-tainted Mitsubishi Fuso Truck & Bus Corp. said Wednesday it is unable to make earnings projections for the current fiscal year.
BUSINESS
Jun 26, 2004

Internet, TV shopping shift firms' focus toward mail-order market

A growing number of retail corporations that once sold mostly over the counter are concentrating more on the mail-order market, made popular by the Internet and television shopping programs.
MORE SPORTS
Jun 10, 2004

Campo hits out at disco-dancing robots, penny-pinching unions

It's probably fair to say that David Campese is not exactly at the top of the International Rugby Board's Christmas card list. Or for that matter the Australia Rugby Union's.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 8, 2004

Hidden plight of detainees

'What did I do to the Japanese people," asks Merdem Yousif. "I came to Japan because I thought the people would be warm-hearted. It was my big mistake. I should have gone to another country."
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
May 31, 2004

Numbers show road to recovery fraught with inflationary risk

The preliminary GDP figures Japan released May 18 show that the gross domestic product in the January-March quarter expanded 1.4 percent (5.6 percent annualized) in real terms over the previous quarter. Compared with the same period in 2003, first-quarter GDP grew a robust 5.4 percent. The GDP has now...
EDITORIALS
May 28, 2004

Banks and their 'debt of gratitude'

It appears that most of Japan's top banks are making good progress toward cleaning up their nonperforming loans. They may not be out of the woods yet, but their latest financial reports indicate that they are on track to meeting a government target for bad-debt reduction in fiscal 2004, which ends March...

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