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COMMENTARY
Aug 31, 2004

Feeling the enemy's breath

LONDON -- The Americans are going home. Or, to be more precise, after more than 60 years, 70,000 American military personnel are to be gradually withdrawn from the European arena. Since the present number of American troops under "European command" is 116,000, this will leave in the longer term between...
EDITORIALS
Aug 30, 2004

An example for the real world

Peace is the central message of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. The Olympic flame -- the symbol of that message -- will be extinguished late Sunday night (early Monday in Japan), about five months after it was lit in Olympia, the site of the ancient Olympics. In a world riven with hatred and violence,...
COMMENTARY
Aug 30, 2004

Cooler summer for French intramurals

PARIS -- "Chaotic all over the territory," warned a French weather forecast recently. This was not, however, the remake, feared by so many, of the August 2003 heat wave, which contributed to 15,000 extra deaths that month.
BASEBALL / MLB
Aug 28, 2004

Japanese baseball commissioner wants to keep two-league system

Japanese baseball commissioner Yasuchika Negoro said Thursday he prioritizes maintaining the two-league system in the debate over whether to realign Japanese professional baseball.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Aug 28, 2004

Words to live by . . . like it or not

Searching for that perfect word to express your truest, dearest, innermost special feelings? Well . . .
JAPAN
Aug 27, 2004

Bigotry hounds former Hansen's patients

At first, Japanese victims of Hansen's disease were jubilant after a court fined a hot spring resort that turned them away last year. Then came the hate mail.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 22, 2004

Zushi residents up in arms over more U.S. military housing

Until about two decades ago, poet Mutsuo Takahashi considered the city of Zushi, Kanagawa Prefecture, virgin territory.
EDITORIALS
Aug 21, 2004

Erosion of LDP factional politics

The largest faction of the Liberal Democratic Party, which until recently was headed by former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, is having trouble selecting its new leader. Turmoil in the faction, known as the Heisei Study Group, indicates further erosion of the LDP's factional politics.
COMMENTARY
Aug 21, 2004

A lonely stand against the party machine

HONG KONG -- The extraordinary story of a county Communist Party secretary's lonely six-year battle against corruption in coastal Fujian Province, unveiled last week on the Web site of the official People's Daily newspaper, on one level marks a personal crusade.
COMMENTARY
Aug 21, 2004

Bad book with good message

LONDON -- Here's a slightly crazy story for these hot summer days. The book the whole world is reading on its holidays -- or at any rate the whole English-speaking world -- is called "The Da Vinci Code," by the American writer Dan Brown.
EDITORIALS
Aug 18, 2004

How will postal privatization help?

Japan's postal savings system, along with mail and insurance services, is to be privatized over a 10-year period beginning in 2007, according to the guidelines drawn up by the government's Economic and Fiscal Policy Council earlier this month. The question is how to transform the system into a viable...
COMMUNITY
Aug 15, 2004

Boys will be . . .

Paint fingernails, then dab on foundation. Lots of foundation. Lipstick and eye shadow go on next. Slip into a comfortable blouse, apply one final blast of VO5 to the hair -- and voila!
Japan Times
Features
Aug 15, 2004

Boys will be ...

Paint fingernails, then dab on foundation. Lots of foundation. Lipstick and eye shadow go on next. Slip into a comfortable blouse, apply one final blast of VO5 to the hair -- and voila!
JAPAN
Aug 13, 2004

Article 9 change signals desire to wage war: NGOs

Japan should not revise Article 9 of the Constitution because its Asian neighbors would regard such an act as proof that the country intends to wage war, nongovernmental organizations and intellectuals said at a symposium held in Tokyo on Wednesday.
OLYMPICS
Aug 13, 2004

Marathon expert Masuda says Noguchi has shot at gold

Former Japan Olympian and top marathon media analyst Akemi Masuda is not the kind of person to mince words when it comes to forecasting on her favorite sport.
COMMENTARY
Aug 13, 2004

An uphill battle for women

LONDON -- Morgan Stanley last month agreed to a $54 million out-of-court settlement to ensure that serious allegations of sexual discrimination against it did not come to trial in the United States. The bank proclaimed its innocence, but if it really had nothing to hide, why didn't it let the evidence...
JAPAN
Aug 13, 2004

Article 9 change signals desire to wage war: NGOs

Japan should not revise Article 9 of the Constitution because its Asian neighbors would regard such an act as proof that the country intends to wage war, nongovernmental organizations and intellectuals said at a symposium held in Tokyo on Wednesday.
JAPAN
Aug 11, 2004

Kepco cost-cuts proved fatal: protesters

OSAKA -- Antinuclear activists in Fukui and Osaka prefectures said Tuesday the accident the day before at the Mihama atomic plant was due to Kansai Electric Power Co.'s attempts to cut costs and will negatively effect the utility's plans to burn MOX fuel in the reactor.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 8, 2004

All of Japan between two covers

JAPAN ENCYCLOPEDIA, by Louis Frederic, translated by Kathe Roth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002, 1102 pp., 48 illus., 14 maps, $59.95 (cloth). This large, beautiful and indispensable volume is a translation of "Le Japan: Dictionnaire et Civilisation," published in 1996, the year of the author's...
EDITORIALS
Aug 7, 2004

Rationale for denuclearization

Fifty-nine years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there is a disturbing sense that the world could be headed for more, not less, nuclear weapons. As the world's first and only atom-bombed nation, Japan is destined to do everything in its power to strive for the nonproliferation and...
JAPAN
Aug 6, 2004

No hurry to soothe China

The recent jeering of Japanese by Chinese soccer fans in the Asian Cup soccer tournament in China has not prompted Japan to speed up talks over a proposed secular war memorial, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Thursday.
EDITORIALS
Aug 2, 2004

The alternative to Mr. Bush

U.S. Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee for president, is now officially embarked on what promises to be a close race for the White House. He made a good start at the party's national convention in Boston last week by pledging to restore "trust and credibility" to the presidency and rebuild Western...
EDITORIALS
Jul 29, 2004

The sustainable whaling option

I t has been just 100 years since Norway began hunting whales in the Antarctic seas, but celebration seems hardly warranted. The International Whaling Commission is effectively paralyzed because its 57 members, split almost equally between prowhaling and antiwhaling nations, are unable to assemble a...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jul 26, 2004

Separate but equal acts of reconciliation

NEW YORK -- In "My Life" (Knopf, 2004), former U.S. President Bill Clinton writes: "Elizabeth Eckford, who at 15 was deeply seared emotionally by vicious harassment as she walked alone through an angry mob, was reconciled with Hazel Massery, one of the girls who had taunted her 40 years earlier."

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji