Search - 2004

 
 
COMMENTARY
Apr 4, 2005

Unstable bond unraveling

South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun's March 23 statement denouncing Japan for its colonial past is bound to seriously damage Tokyo-Seoul relations that have been improving in recent years. The statement reverses positive diplomacy Seoul has pursued on the basis of a 2003 agreement between Roh and Prime...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Apr 3, 2005

Giants no longer packing 'em in at the Big Egg

Perhaps this is a sign of the times indicating the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants, the once-almighty Kyojin team, does not have the overwhelming popularity it once had.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 3, 2005

Religious liaisons: A voice from the void

LETTERS OF THE NUN ESHINNI: Images of Pure Land Buddhism in Medieval Japan, by James C. Dobbins. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004, 261 pp., with b/w illustrations, $60 (cloth). In 1921 a cache of papers was found in the archives of the Nishi Honganji temple in Kyoto. They were written by a...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Apr 2, 2005

English media in dilemma over Eriksson and national team

LONDON -- England continued its march toward the 2006 World Cup finals, but the impression is that its progress has left many in the hack pack who report the national team with a dilemma.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Apr 2, 2005

Carp fight back to down Giants

Greg Larocca hit a game-tying solo homer and Koichi Ogata followed with a two-run blast in the ninth inning Friday as the Hiroshima Carp rallied to beat the Yomiuri Giants 4-2 in the Central League's opening-day action.
JAPAN
Apr 2, 2005

Japan ready to drill in disputed waters

Japan will prepare to grant exploratory drilling rights in disputed waters of the East China Sea adjacent to where China hopes to launch full-scale drilling for natural gas, industry minister Shoichi Nakagawa said Friday.
JAPAN
Apr 2, 2005

Nuclear foes want Rokkasho, Monju on U.N. nonproliferation agenda

KYOTO -- Japanese and international antinuclear groups plan to use an upcoming United Nations conference on nuclear nonproliferation to push for a moratorium on the Rokkasho atomic fuel reprocessing plant and the Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 2, 2005

Life coaching helps you move on with momentum

"People have personal trainers to keep them fit and healthy," says Wendy Kerr. "It seems perfectly logical to have personal coaches to keep life moving in the right direction."
EDITORIALS
Apr 1, 2005

New era for depositors

Beginning Friday, in a sure sign of the renewed strength at Japanese banks, the government will reimpose the legal cap on deposit-insurance coverage. Nine years ago, in 1996, that ceiling -- 10 million yen in principal plus interest -- was removed amid widespread concern about banks' ballooning bad debt....
JAPAN
Apr 1, 2005

Traffic fatality figures 3.5% better

The number of people who survived the first 24 hours but died within 30 days of a traffic accident fell 3.5 percent from the previous year to a record 1,134 in 2004, the National Police Agency said Thursday.
BUSINESS
Apr 1, 2005

Toyota-led team agrees to aid struggling Misawa

Misawa Homes Holdings Inc. announced Thursday that a team led by Toyota Motor Corp. has agreed to inject 25.8 billion yen in fresh capital into the troubled home builder.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Apr 1, 2005

Best face on a looting binge

MOSCOW -- The city "went mad" amid an "orgy of looting." Thousands of people of all ages roamed the streets, plundering shops and government offices. Armed with sticks, they smashed everything they couldn't take home and fought each other over valuable spoils. The dictator's palace, foreboding in the...
BUSINESS
Apr 1, 2005

Mac back on the attack with wide price cuts, growth plans

McDonald's Co. (Japan) Ltd. unveiled a new menu Thursday that cut prices for many of its core products.
EDITORIALS
Mar 30, 2005

Ready or not, a revolution it is

Fourteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union, democracy is showing fresh signs of life in yet another former Soviet republic: Kyrgyzstan. Last week, in a dramatic display of "people power," popular protests against disputed elections toppled President Askar Akayev, who had ruled the Central Asian...
BUSINESS
Mar 30, 2005

FSA preparing guide for cross-sector financial conglomerates

The Financial Services Agency will draw up guidelines for supervising cross-sector financial conglomerates in June in the face of increasing reorganization by banks, brokerages and insurers, agency officials said Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Mar 29, 2005

Interest in diversification grows ahead of 'payoff' deadline

What is the best way to diversify your assets in an economy with rock-bottom interest rates, faltering bank security and Friday's termination of the government's full guarantee on savings accounts?
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 28, 2005

Low rates endanger South Korean banks

GUATEMALA CITY -- Misguided central-bank policies are wreaking havoc around the world. From Seoul to Washington and back, central bankers have forced down short-term interest rates in an orgy of monetary promiscuity.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 27, 2005

A fully not-boring Indian adventure

SHANTARAM, by Gregory David Roberts. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2004, 936 pp., $24.95 (cloth). The lives that some people lead can put fiction to shame. One such example would be Australian novelist Gregory David Roberts, a former heroin addict who held up banks with a toy pistol. Apprehended and...
BUSINESS
Mar 25, 2005

Costs chill large firms' confidence

Business confidence among large companies in Japan plummeted in the January-March quarter.
BUSINESS
Mar 24, 2005

Tokyo land prices grow for first time in 14 years

Land prices at five commercial areas in Tokyo edged up an average of 0.5 percent in calendar 2004 for the first increase in 14 years.
BUSINESS
Mar 24, 2005

BioCarbon Fund gets new buyer

Sumitomo Chemical Co. said Wednesday it will invest $2.5 million in the World Bank's BioCarbon Fund by 2017 to obtain some 400,000 carbon credits, which count against greenhouse gas emissions.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Mar 23, 2005

Duty calls

Special to The Japan Times In the United States, it's said that the Vietnam War was lost on TV. As the first armed conflict to receive graphic coverage on nightly news shows, the war seemed closer than it was. Consequently, questions surrounding its legitimacy eventually came to the fore and, for many...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 22, 2005

The U.N.'s 'underachievers'

Carol Bellamy, the outgoing head of the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), has bemoaned the lack of women in top U.N. posts. The organization that preaches gender equality to national governments needs some "affirmative action" to put women in senior positions, she said, adding that other organizations such...
EDITORIALS
Mar 21, 2005

Decade after Aum's crimes

For many Japanese, the March 20, 1995, sarin attack on Tokyo's subways -- which killed 12 people and sickened more than 5,000 -- is still fresh in their memory. The passage of 10 years seems hardly enough to heal the sorrow of the families of the deceased and the suffering of the surviving victims.
COMMENTARY
Mar 21, 2005

A cow walk toward a crisis

The Japan-U.S. row over beef imports looms as a grave problem that could develop into serious bilateral friction. Until recently the two countries had enjoyed what many experts regarded as the best relations yet in the postwar years. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi supported U.S. President George W....

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