Search - 2004

 
 
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.
JAPAN
Jun 30, 2005

Roots of abuse borderless: Swedish reporter

As child abuse increasingly makes headlines in Japan, a Swedish journalist who has made many documentaries on youngsters says there is indeed truth to common findings that many abusive parents were victims of abuse during their own childhood.
MORE SPORTS
Jun 29, 2005

Pregnant Tani to miss worlds

Ryoko Tani is hoping to accomplish what no woman has ever done in Japanese sports history, when she aims for her fifth Olympic medal and first as a mother in Beijing in 2008.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jun 27, 2005

Shining a light on Turkish-Japanese ties

NEW YORK -- Selcuk Esenbel was in town. For many years now a professor of history at Bogazici University, Istanbul, Selcuk was, when I met her more than 30 years ago, studying Japanese history at Columbia University. The fruit of that study is her 1998 tome, which she gave me during her previous visit...
JAPAN
Jun 27, 2005

Alleged bid-riggers got huge Japan Highway deals

Forty-seven companies allegedly involved in rigging bids for government construction projects also won contracts worth a combined 443.7 billion yen over the past five years for steel bridge orders placed by Japan Highway Public Corp., according to internal Japan Highway documents.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 27, 2005

Will South Korea's economy follow Japan's?

GUATEMALA CITY -- Despite numerous economic stimulus packages during his tenure in office, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun must regret his promise to oversee annual economic growth of about 7 percent during his five-year term. As it is, the South Korean economy grew in the first quarter of 2005 at...
Japan Times
Features
Jun 26, 2005

What price is heritage?

Landmark one day, parking lot the next -- that is the fate that seems about to befall an early 20th-century stone building in the heart of historic Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture.
JAPAN
Jun 25, 2005

U.S. urges longer GSDF role in Iraq

Washington has informally asked Japan to extend the mission of Japanese troops in Iraq beyond the current December deadline, Tokyo government sources said Friday.
JAPAN
Jun 25, 2005

Trio plead guilty over revolving-door death at Roppongi Hills

Three men pleaded guilty Friday to professional negligence resulting in death as their trial opened in the death of a 6-year-old boy whose head was crushed in an automatic revolving door at Tokyo's Roppongi Hills.
EDITORIALS
Jun 25, 2005

A mind to reduce waste

Two jointly announced government white papers -- one on the environment and the other on the establishment of a recycling society -- are the first such annual reports since the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty on global warming, went into effect in February following ratification by Russia in...
Japan Times
SOCCER / J. League
Jun 24, 2005

F. Marinos manager Okada content working at club level

Been there. Done that. Got the gray hair to prove it.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 24, 2005

Door wide open for resolving Korean nuclear issue

HONOLULU -- There is no country in Asia, indeed in the world, that behaves like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). Since its founding more than a half century ago, the DPRK has pursued a different course, always troubling. For 13-15 years it has been the very center of Northeast Asian...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 24, 2005

'Manifesto' again holds cachet over platform

Political parties have made pledges ranging from disaster measures and local infrastructure development to education and the environment in the runup to the July 3 Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election.
JAPAN
Jun 24, 2005

GSDF vehicle windshield damaged in Iraq blast

An explosion took place Thursday morning near four Ground Self-Defense Force vehicles in southern Iraq, damaging one windshield, government officials in Tokyo said.
JAPAN
Jun 23, 2005

Japan plans to drop bid to host ITER

Japan plans to give up its bid to have the world's first nuclear fusion reactor built in Aomori Prefecture, paving the way for the multibillion dollar project to go to the European Union, government sources said Wednesday.
BUSINESS
Jun 23, 2005

Sony shareholders give nod to Stringer's team

Shareholders of Sony Corp. on Wednesday approved a new management team led by Howard Stringer, who pledged to turn around the company's struggling consumer electronics business.
JAPAN
Jun 23, 2005

Death, disease not linked to smoking: high court

The Tokyo High Court on Wednesday dismissed an appeal filed by former smokers, some now deceased, who were each demanding 10 million yen in compensation from Japan Tobacco Inc. and the government for tobacco-induced illnesses.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 23, 2005

Osaka 'curfew' plan rife with problems

OSAKA — It's a Saturday evening in early 2006, and four Osaka-area 15-year-old friends, Kenji, Taro, Yoko and Yuka, show up at a theater to see the latest movie. The time is 6:45 p.m., 15 minutes before the movie starts.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 22, 2005

Breathing the life into the dance

"I had a hard time finding the title," Pina Bausch tells me during an interview about her most recent work, "Nefes." The Turkish for "Breath" is the title of the latest in a series of works which the choreographer, who will turn 65 in July this year, has created in collaboration with theaters around...
BUSINESS
Jun 22, 2005

Banks to adhere to planned law on theft compensation

Banks will amend their current business rules in line with legislation submitted to the Diet designed to offer broader compensation to victims of bank-card crimes, the head of the industry said Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Jun 22, 2005

Dependent tax breaks may end, but hike denied

The Tax Commission is recommending that spouse and adult offspring deductions be cut to help get rid of the nation's debt.
JAPAN
Jun 22, 2005

Private universities shine in 2005 civil service exam

A record 406 applicants from private universities passed the top level civil service exam this fiscal year, accounting for a record 24.3 percent of successful candidates, the National Personnel Authority said Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Jun 22, 2005

Kokudo, Prince show negative worth

Kokudo Corp. and Prince Hotels Inc., members of the Seibu Railway Co. group, each had a negative net worth in fiscal 2004 due to large extraordinary losses, company officials said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Jun 22, 2005

10% of bureaucrats quit after subsidized sabbaticals

Out of 576 young career-track bureaucrats who studied abroad at government expense from fiscal 1997 through 2002, 56 quit within five years after returning home, according to a study by the National Personnel Authority.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 22, 2005

Sacred sounds of Ainu tonkori resurrected

Keeping traditions alive is not easy; it's even harder when there is no one to teach them. When Ainu musician Oki recently re-created traditional tunes on the tonkori, the stringed instrument of the Ainu people, his only guides were pre-1970s recordings of tonkori music collected by ethnomusicologists...
BUSINESS
Jun 21, 2005

Credit card companies urge calm over data theft in U.S.

Major credit card firms appealed Monday for calm after it was learned that personal information on tens of thousands of Japanese card holders may have been leaked as a result of a security breach in the United States.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past