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BUSINESS
Feb 14, 2002

DoCoMo announces 10-year bond issue to raise 70 billion yen

NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan's dominant mobile phone service provider, said Wednesday it will raise 70 billion yen with 1.64 percent coupon, 10-year domestic bonds.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Feb 14, 2002

Call for a 'paradigm shift' to eco-economy

As Japan's economy sputters to a halt, the rest of the world looks on incredulously, wondering if this nation is up to the task of an overhaul.
JAPAN / CLOSE NEIGHBORS
Feb 14, 2002

Lawmakers' views of past still plague relations

An education ministry panel's approval last April of a history textbook, which critics denounced as attempting to glorify Japan's wartime past, drew a quick response from South Korean politicians.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / GARDENS FOR ALL
Feb 14, 2002

Take time to savor Ryoanji's splendors

The stone garden at Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto is perhaps the most famous of all Japanese gardens, and in 1994 it was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
COMMENTARY
Feb 13, 2002

Wrong cure for Japan's economic ills

So U.S. President George W. Bush has decided the future of Asia depends on overcoming Japan's puzzling, decade-long economic stagnation. But do he or his advisers understand what is really wrong with that economy?
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 13, 2002

Southeast Asia receives terrorism wake-up call

HONG KONG -- The wake-up call has been loud and clear. As the alarm sounded, it confirmed that terrorism in Southeast Asia is a problem in need of attention. The most urgent wake-up call did not come from the southern Philippines, where around 650 U.S. troops are now being deployed as Washington opens...
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Feb 13, 2002

Marc-Andre Hamelin

Canadian pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin was the only classical musician to play live at the 2001 Grammy Awards Ceremony, a distinction that some of his peers might find dubious and others downright horrifying. It isn't clear what benefit the gig afforded Hamelin in terms of record sales, but in a roundabout...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 13, 2002

Korean art of fine living

In celebration of the upcoming 2002 World Cup soccer finals co-hosted by South Korea and Japan, the Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum will hold an exhibition titled "Masterpieces of Korean Art from the Joseon Dynasty" from Feb. 19. The exhibition consists of 300 works of art of the Joseon, or Yi, Dynasty...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 13, 2002

Romance at the edge of reason

"I always believed it was taboo to portray madness on stage, and I never dared to do it before," Hideki Noda writes in the program notes to "Urikotoba (Fighting talk/Words for sale)," his latest enterprise as writer/director, now playing at Spiral Hall in Tokyo's Aoyama district.
COMMENTARY
Feb 11, 2002

Fixing the Foreign Ministry

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi paid a high price for sacking Makiko Tanaka as foreign minister — a free fall in his Cabinet's popularity ratings. The debacle highlighted three major problems involving the Foreign Ministry:
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Feb 11, 2002

California prehistory mired in La Brea tar pits

LA BREA, Calif. -- The world, 40,000 years ago -- The weather's perfect. A warm breeze from the Pacific rustles the palms, there's the sharp tang of juniper and pine in the air, and the nameless mountains, which rise beyond the plain that will one day be Los Angeles, glow mauve in the early morning sun....
JAPAN
Feb 10, 2002

Transplant expert rues cadaveric donor, social charity dearth

Surgery is an art founded on science, or so says University of Tokyo professor Masatoshi Makuuchi, who specializes in transplants and is one of the nation's leading liver surgeons.
JAPAN
Feb 10, 2002

Oki promises to focus on Kyoto pact

Newly appointed Environment Minister Hiroshi Oki said Friday he will focus on having the Kyoto Protocol put into force and helping Japan build "political momentum" in the runup to the August environmental summit in Johannesburg.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Feb 10, 2002

TV sports trump freedom; public loses

MOSCOW -- There is no television broadcast in Russia anymore that is independent of the Russian government. Having applied the poisonous gas of legal niceties, the Kremlin has shut down the last stronghold of dissent, the vocal and opinionated TV-6. It was the coup de grace in Russian President Vladimir...
CULTURE / Music / JAZZNICITY
Feb 10, 2002

Jazz that isn't afraid to be entertaining

For a long time in jazz, playing to the crowd was a sign of selling out. Creating music that pleased listeners was considered by many jazz players, and their fans, to be insincere, compromised and unsophisticated. "Entertainment" became something of a dirty word.
CULTURE / Music
Feb 10, 2002

The name of the man is David Byrne

It says something about David Byrne's current position in popular music that two of the records released in 2001 on his Luaka Bop label -- Shuggie Otis' "Inspiration Information" and Jim White's "No Such Place" -- received more press than Byrne's own solo album, "Look Into the Eyeball."
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Feb 10, 2002

Home with the best

Being the youngest in a large family meant, in my case, becoming an auntie when I was still in my teens. And during my long self-exile in Japan, I patiently awaited the arrival of a new generation of travelers -- but then started feeling neglected as one nephew and niece after another circled the world...
EDITORIALS
Feb 9, 2002

Lackluster debate hinders reform

Japan faces an urgent need to make a sweeping transition comparable in magnitude to the periods that followed the Meiji Restoration and the end of World War II. But judging from the plenary debates conducted in both Houses of the Diet this week, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's program of national...
JAPAN
Feb 9, 2002

Farm ministry begins beef testing

The farm ministry, responding to the revelation that Snow Brand Foods Co. abused a government beef-buyback program implemented after the discovery of mad cow disease in Japan, began random inspections Friday of beef it bought from across the nation.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 9, 2002

Hire women, aged before foreigners, expert says

While Japan's unemployment rate is hovering at its worst level in the postwar era and manufacturers are shifting production abroad for cheaper labor, foreign workers seem to be enjoying their share of demand.
MORE SPORTS
Feb 8, 2002

WBC may order fight rematch

The World Boxing Council is considering a rematch of Tuesday's super-bantamweight title fight between champion Willie Jorrin of the United States and Japanese challenger Osamu Sato, which ended in a contentious draw.
BUSINESS
Feb 8, 2002

Kansai forum hears calls for innovation

OSAKA -- "No guts, no glory" was the rallying cry for nearly 400 Kansai area business and government leaders Thursday, the opening day of the 40th annual Kansai Economic Seminar.
JAPAN
Feb 8, 2002

Are cell phones becoming too disruptive?

Masahito Tagami spent some 900,000 yen on a relay antenna system when he opened an "izakaya" restaurant in the basement of a building in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, last April, so that customers could use their mobile phones.
JAPAN
Feb 8, 2002

German deal seen as model for war laborer claims

A $5.2 billion compensation deal struck by Germany with representatives of victims of forced labor during World War II, to be shared by the government and industry, could serve as a model for Japan in dealing with redress claims by Asian wartime laborers, according to two key negotiators.
BUSINESS
Feb 7, 2002

G7 to pour wrath on Japan's economy, yen dive

With the economy already wobbling, Japan may find itself on the ropes when finance chiefs from the Group of Seven major economic powers gather this week in Ottawa.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Feb 7, 2002

Hypersexual farming

Humans have practiced selective breeding for thousands of years to develop plants, animals and fungi better suited for human use than they are in their natural states. No genetic engineering is required, yet the genes of selected strains are different, "improved." Even people opposed to genetic modification...

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji