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COMMENTARY / World
Jun 26, 2008

Balancing act across Taiwan Strait

WASHINGTON — So far, events have proven the optimists to be correct. The dialogue between Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) has resumed. As the basis, the Taiwan side only pledged adherence to the "1992 consensus," and...
BUSINESS
Jun 26, 2008

Goodwill to liquidate temp agency

Goodwill Group said Wednesday it will close its scandal-tainted temp staff unit Goodwill Inc. by the end of July because the health ministry is preparing to revoke its business license.
EDITORIALS
Jun 26, 2008

Divided Diet on break

The ordinary Diet session ended last week, but an extraordinary session will begin in late August with the Diet as divided as it is now. Despite confusion, the divided Diet produced some desirable results. Based on their experiences in the ordinary Diet session, both the ruling and opposition forces...
Reader Mail
Jun 26, 2008

Entry procedure up and working

Please allow me to update readers on my May 18 letter contrasting the business-friendly immigration policies of Hong Kong with the effects of the discriminatory Japanese immigration law of Nov. 20, 2007, at Kansai airport.
BUSINESS
Jun 25, 2008

JT execs face shareholders' ire over food poisonings, tax talk

Shareholders of Japan Tobacco Inc. peppered management with questions Tuesday over the food-poisoning scandal involving pesticide-tainted frozen "gyoza" dumplings made in China.
EDITORIALS
Jun 25, 2008

More doctors needed

A private advisory body for health minister Yoichi Masuzoe has urged the government to increase its quota for medical students. The recommendation comes amid reports that pregnant women, children and rural residents are having difficulties getting medical treatment. The government should implement this...
JAPAN
Jun 25, 2008

U.S. notifies Tokyo of plan to delist North

Washington has notified Tokyo of its plan to start the process Thursday of striking North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism if Pyongyang files a declaration of its nuclear activities, Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said Tuesday.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Jun 24, 2008

Silver-spoon politicians who rule

A growing number of politicians in Japan have "inherited" their parliamentary seats from their fathers. Unless this "hereditary" system is reversed, Japanese politics in all likelihood will continue on a path of decline.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jun 24, 2008

Australian architect makes homes that coexist with their surroundings

In 2006 it was the Australia-Japan Year of Exchange. This year, it would seem, is the Australia-Roppongi Year of Exchange. Not only is a huge exhibition of the late Aboriginal artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye being held in Roppongi at the National Art Center until July 28, but Gallery Ma, the specialist...
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jun 24, 2008

Holding management to account

Because public companies are owned by their shareholders, any time they convene is when key corporate decisions are made.
COMMENTARY
Jun 23, 2008

Flattop can forget about a haven from controversy

A dispute over whether to accept a plan to let the U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George Washington use Yokosuka as its home port seemed to have been settled when the municipal assembly rejected a proposal to hold a referendum on the subject.
Reader Mail
Jun 22, 2008

Witness to 9/11 flight debris

Regarding John Spiri's June 17 Zeit Gist article, "(Japanese) Lawmaker takes 9/11 doubts global": The plane (Flight 767) did not "vaporize" as some say. The plane broke into thousands of small and large pieces and were clearly visible to all of us there that day. They were collected piece by piece in...
LIFE / Travel
Jun 22, 2008

In the footsteps of Dylan Thomas

SWANSEA, Wales — Thursday night in Swansea and it's a full house. Outside, it's the kind of night that Dylan Thomas would have described as "starless and Bible black." Inside, text-messaging teenagers and polite pensioners count the seconds to the interval and the ritual stampede for ice-cream as the...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 22, 2008

An impressionable connoisseur of cultures

TRAVELS IN THE EAST by Donald Richie, with a foreword by Stephen Mansfield. Berkeley, California: Stone Bridge Press, 2007, 180 pp., $14.95 (paper) Donald Richie continues to write learnedly, wittily and insightfully about Japan, of whose culture he is one of the world's greatest interpreters. Readers...
JAPAN
Jun 21, 2008

Fukuda gets report on boosting immigrants

Members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party submitted a bold report Friday to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, calling for Japan to increase its foreign residents to up to 10 percent of the nation's population in the next 50 years.
JAPAN
Jun 21, 2008

JCG delivers apology to Taiwan skipper over sinking of his boat

The head of the Japan Coast Guard's Okinawa regional headquarters handed a letter of apology to the captain of a Taiwanese fishing boat that sank in a June 10 collision with a JCG patrol ship, coast guard officials in Tokyo said Friday.
EDITORIALS
Jun 21, 2008

Consumers to come first

An expert panel has submitted to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda a final plan to establish a Consumer Agency that would integrate the administration of consumer affairs now handled by different ministries and agencies.
JAPAN / G8 COUNTDOWN
Jun 20, 2008

NGOs press Fukuda for midterm gas emissions goals

A strong sense of urgency regarding climate change must be communicated to the Group of Eight leaders and more than a long-term goal for cutting greenhouse gas emissions is called for, representatives of nongovernmental organizations said Thursday.

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