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BUSINESS
Jul 5, 2005

'04 tax revenue up 5.3% as jobs, dividends grow

In a sign the economy is growing stronger, tax revenues in fiscal 2004 rose 5.3 percent from the previous year to 45.59 trillion yen for the first increase in four years, the Finance Ministry said Monday.
BUSINESS / INDUSTRY TRENDS
Jul 5, 2005

Makers read the leaves: green tea is where it's at

A rowdy tea party is brewing in the soft drink industry as companies crank up already-intense competition in the rapidly growing market for bottled green tea.
JAPAN
Jul 5, 2005

Lawmakers' average income drops to new low

The average annual income reported by members of both houses of the Diet dropped to a record-low 23.59 million yen in 2004, down 5 percent from the previous low of 24.81 million yen in 2003, according to a tally by Kyodo News based on annual reports released Monday.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Jul 4, 2005

Ministries should seek corporate input when revamping statistics

There have been complaints that the economic statistics compiled by the government no longer reflect the developments of the times or the changing structure of the Japanese economy.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 2, 2005

Rain season just mirage in drought-hit west Japan

Western Japan got a brief respite from its record dry spell Friday, but water levels in many reservoirs are way below normal, and the region could face a serious drought if more rainfall fails to arrive, experts have warned.
JAPAN
Jul 1, 2005

'Harmful' Net info faces filter campaign

The government said Thursday it will promote the use of filtering software against what it judges to be harmful information over the Internet, in a bid to prevent such incidents as group suicides and production of explosives via Internet use.
BUSINESS
Jul 1, 2005

'Takkyubin' founder, regulation foe, dead at 80

Former Yamato Transport Co. Chairman Masao Ogura, who in the 1970s started the first private door-to-door parcel delivery service firm in Japan, died Wednesday of kidney failure in Los Angeles, his family said. He was 80.
JAPAN
Jul 1, 2005

Banks admit 800,000 cases of customer data losses

A wave of customer data losses has been sweeping across Japan, with more than 800,000 such cases being detected at major banking groups and regional banks, companies and financial institutions said Thursday.
JAPAN
Jun 30, 2005

Bureaucrat embezzlement nets a slap

Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Shoichi Nakagawa said Wednesday he will voluntarily give up one-month's salary in the wake of the alleged misappropriation of 24 million yen in public funds by a senior ministry official for personal stock trading.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jun 30, 2005

A revealing peek inside working women's purses

Let me confess my weakness: women's briefcases. I don't mean buying them; I mean peeking into those belonging to my friends, and begging them to take out the contents so I can look them over and go "Heeeee, soonandaaa (Oooh, so THAT's what it's all about)."
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jun 30, 2005

Changing values pose problems for terminal care in Japan

Several years ago, I read cancer surgeon Fumio Yamazaki's unforgettable book titled "Dying in a Japanese Hospital." Through case studies of his patients, he describes the final moments in the lives of terminal cancer sufferers. Invariably, just as a patient is slipping away, doctors battle to resuscitate...
COMMENTARY
Jun 29, 2005

India: U.S. ally or independent power?

NEW DELHI -- The courtship between the world's most powerful and most populous democracies is in full swing, with a new international poll showing that at a time when anti-Americanism has spread across the globe more people in India have a positive view of the United States than in any other nation surveyed....
COMMENTARY
Jun 29, 2005

A tidal wave of optimism

LOS ANGELES -- Talk about an ocean of optimism! Here's a positive current for you if there ever was one: A close friend -- whom I dub The Very Successful Korean-American Businessman (VSKAB), who doesn't want his name to be used (but whose last name is Kim like several million other Korean-Americans),...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 29, 2005

Hayashi loses appeal over curry poisonings

OSAKA — Masumi Hayashi must hang for murdering four people and injuring 63 others with arsenic-laced curry at a Wakayama summer festival seven years ago, the Osaka High Court ruled Tuesday, upholding a lower court verdict.
JAPAN / BULLETIN BOARD
Jun 27, 2005

Tickets to Live8 concert now available through lottery

A lottery is now open for tickets to the Japan performance of the Live8 series of rock concerts aimed at getting world leaders to help Africa.
JAPAN
Jun 27, 2005

Nakasone against building a new war memorial

Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone expressed strong opposition Sunday to building a secular memorial to Japan's war dead that political leaders could visit without provoking Asian countries.
COMMENTARY
Jun 27, 2005

Perceptions that defy amity

On a recent Korea Air flight from Narita to Inchon, South Korea, I was surprised when they showed images of air routes on the in-flight video system. The Tok-do islets in the Sea of Japan, the source of a Japan-South Korea territorial dispute, were shown as prominently as Tokyo and Seoul. The islets,...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jun 26, 2005

New book offers interesting retrospective on Japanese game

Remembering Japanese Baseball, an Oral History of the Game is the title of a new book by Robert K. Fitts, the creator of RobsJapanese Cards.com, the world's largest Web site dedicated to Japanese baseball cards and memorabilia.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 26, 2005

Divorces among elderly couples the topic of TV Tokyo's "Monday Entertainment" and more

For as many reasons as there are old people, the number of divorces among elderly Japanese couples who had been married for many years rose steeply during the 1990s. However, in the last several years the number has leveled off. Apparently, the stabilization of the divorce rate of seniors has little...
COMMENTARY
Jun 26, 2005

The beginning of empathy?

HONOLULU -- The strains in the Japan-South Korea relationship are far too deep-rooted for any single summit meeting to assuage. Rather, the objective of any summit should be setting the proper tone for bilateral relations. By this yardstick, the meeting Monday between Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 26, 2005

Hokusai: From East to West and back again

HOKUSAI AND HIS AGE: Ukiyo-e Painting, Printmaking and Book Illustration in Late Edo Japan, edited by John T. Carpenter. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers/Hotei Publishing, 2005, 357 pp., 227 color & 126 b/w photos, $125 (cloth). The West first discovered the art of the Japanese woodblock print. Though popular...

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes