Search - 2003

 
 
COMMENTARY
Apr 13, 2003

Thailand seeks an advantage

HONOLULU -- Southeast Asian politicians and business professionals continue to insist that China's rise is "an opportunity, not a threat" to their future. That sounds a lot like whistling past the graveyard. The Chinese market is so big and has such a wealth of human and material resources that conventional...
JAPAN
Apr 7, 2003

Fans celebrate Astro Boy's 'birthday' in Tokyo parade

Wearing red boots and pointy black hats, Japanese revelers paraded down a Tokyo street Sunday as a brass band played "Happy Birthday" in honor of a fictitious robot boy.
EDITORIALS
Apr 5, 2003

A partially changing land-price map

Falling land prices are symptomatic of Japan's deflationary economy. Banks sell collateralized land to write off dud loans. Companies dump their land holdings to pay off debts. Land prices drop further as the property market weakens. As things stand, there seems to be no way to halt this vicious circle....
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Apr 5, 2003

Real Madrid vs. Manchester United as good as it gets

LONDON -- Arsene Wenger did not need a second to think about his answer.
BUSINESS
Apr 5, 2003

Pack of Marlboros and a JGB, please

The government is trying to make it easier for you to buy its bonds and finance its deficits.
BUSINESS
Apr 4, 2003

Shipments of printers drop 9.4%

Domestic shipments of printers came to 6.99 million in 2002, down 9.4 percent from the previous year for the second consecutive year of decline, according to research firm Gartner Japan Ltd.
BUSINESS
Apr 4, 2003

Tokyo Electron looks to trim fat

Tokyo Electron Ltd., the country's largest manufacturer of chip-making equipment, said Thursday it will slash about 10 percent of its group workforce to weather bleak semiconductor demand.
BUSINESS
Apr 3, 2003

Mizuho to speed up branch mergers

Mizuho Bank will accelerate the consolidation of its branches this fiscal year, bank sources said Wednesday.
EDITORIALS
Apr 2, 2003

A timely resignation

It's deja vu all over again. Yet another lawmaker has fallen into disgrace over money scandals. On Monday Mr. Tadamori Oshima, the minister of agriculture, fisheries and forestry, resigned his post in order to take responsibility for the alleged graft and misuse of campaign funds by his former secretaries....
BUSINESS
Apr 2, 2003

946,000 high school, college graduates enter workforce

Around 946,000 graduates entered the workforce Tuesday, joining company welcoming ceremonies on the first day of the 2003 business year amid lingering concerns over the economy and the Iraq war, the labor ministry said.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 30, 2003

East to West: the seductive Madame Sadayakko

MADAME SADAYAKKO: The Geisha Who Seduced the West, by Lesley Downer. London: Review Press/Hodder Headline, 2003, 336 pp., map, photos, £20 (cloth) In 1899, a 27-year-old ex-geisha who called herself Sadayakko embarked on a new career in San Francisco. With her entrepreneur-husband's enthusiastic backing,...
BUSINESS
Mar 29, 2003

RCC buys more, pays more for soured loans

The state-run Resolution and Collection Corp. has bought 2.3 trillion yen worth of bad loans from hobbled banks since a revision of the financial-system revival law, the RCC said Friday.
BUSINESS
Mar 29, 2003

China urged to deal with piracy

Japan urged China on Friday to crack down on piracy of video games, CDs and movies.
BUSINESS
Mar 29, 2003

Expanded deregulation plan OK'd

An expanded version of a three-year deregulatory program featuring 405 more items aimed at opening up the public sector to private firms was approved Friday by the government.
JAPAN
Mar 29, 2003

Koizumi says Japan ready to support efforts to reconstruct postwar Iraq

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Friday that Japan is ready to take some action to support the postwar reconstruction of Iraq even before a new law is enacted to facilitate a dispatch of Self-Defense Forces troops.
BUSINESS
Mar 29, 2003

Panel approves hike in NTT access fees

A government advisory panel on Friday approved a controversial plan to increase the interconnection fees NTT charges other firms to use its fixed telephone lines for fiscal 2003 and 2004.
JAPAN
Mar 29, 2003

Record 5.77 million visitors in '02

The number of foreigners entering Japan hit a record 5.77 million in 2002, up 9.2 percent from the previous year, the Immigration Bureau said Friday.
MORE SPORTS
Mar 28, 2003

Japanese on final roster

Linebacker Masafumi Kawaguchi and three other Japanese have made the final roster on the Amsterdam Admirals for the 2003 season of the European affiliate of the NFL, NFL Japan officials said Wednesday.
JAPAN
Mar 27, 2003

Spy satellites part of intelligence quest

Intelligence can be the key to a military triumph. In assessing an enemy's strengths and positions, as well as adjusting strategies in line with fluid scenarios, accurate intelligence plays a vital role.
COMMENTARY
Mar 27, 2003

Warfare that stymies protest

LONDON -- This, we were promised, would be the most politically correct war in history. Harlan Ullman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says the strategy of conquering Iraq by "shock and awe" bombing, was devised simply because this is the most unpopular...
LIFE / Digital / NETWISE
Mar 27, 2003

Heading off spam at the pass

It's been just over a year since my personal e-mail account started getting upwards of 20 junk mails a day and I ditched it for a new, spam-free one. I created another -- simple enough when you have your own domain -- but found in mere months that I was right back where I started. Even taking great care...
BUSINESS
Mar 26, 2003

Kinki Nippon Railway facing huge extraordinary loss

Kinki Nippon Railway Co. said Tuesday it will book an extraordinary loss of 106 billion yen for the 2002 business year, primarily due to appraisal losses suffered on resort facilities and a downsizing program.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 24, 2003

Don't write off U.N. just yet

EDMONTON, Alberta-- The hawks in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush finally got what they wanted -- in New York, as well as in the Middle East. The U.N. Security Council is deeply divided, the U.N. system itself seems paralyzed and a preemptive war is about to win "regime change" in...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 23, 2003

Practice makes perfect

COPYING THE MASTER AND STEALING HIS SECRETS, edited by Brenda Jordan and Victoria Weston, with an introduction by J. Thomas Rimer. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003, 248 pp., 14 color plates, 52 monochrome photos, $50 (cloth) As Thomas Rimer writes in his introduction to this interesting collection...

Longform

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