Search - 2005

 
 
BASEBALL / MLB
Nov 30, 2005

Matsui returns home after his 'disappointing' season

New York Yankees outfielder Hideki Matsui returned to Japan on Tuesday and said he feels disappointed with his performance this year despite posting career-best numbers in some key batting categories.
BUSINESS
Nov 30, 2005

OECD expecting steady 2% growth in economy

Japan could grow steadily by 2.0 percent in both 2006 and 2007 because the world's second-largest economy is now less dependent on exports and its expansion is spreading to domestically oriented activity, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Tuesday.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Nov 29, 2005

Bird flu, same-sex, posting

Bird flu With all the panic flying around on the subject of bird flu, several readers have asked where to get down to-earth information and advice. Sascha Hewitt's online store and resource center Natural Healing Center has a well-grounded article with a link to its home page on the subject: naturalhealingcenter.com/...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 27, 2005

The Jesuit boys' tour of Europe

THE JAPANESE MISSION TO EUROPE, 1582-1590: The Journey of Four Samurai Boys Through Portugal, Spain and Italy, by Michael Cooper. Global Oriental, 2005, 262 pp., xix black and white plates, $85 (cloth). Michael Cooper, a former editor of Monumenta Nipponica, has contributed significantly to our knowledge...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 27, 2005

The Indianapolis Museum of Art takes some tradition back to Japan

JAPANESE MASTERWORKS: Paintings From the Indianapolis Museum of Art; edited by Heisaku Harada and John Tadao Teramoto; foreword by Anthony Hirschel; introduction by Christine M.E. Guth; and essays by Tae Nishida, Shiji Hashimoto, Takeshi Nagai and Yumiko Kuniga. Seattle: University of Washington Press,...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Nov 26, 2005

Keane's baggage may scupper his dream move to Celtic

LONDON -- In August, you would probably have been able to name your own odds against both Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson and captain Roy Keane seeking new employment midseason. One half of any such bet has already come up trumps, and unless United beat Benfica in Lisbon on Wednesday week,...
BUSINESS
Nov 26, 2005

Digital players killing off MDs

Global sales of recordable MiniDiscs are expected to total 144 million units in 2005, down 25 percent from the previous year, due to the widespread use of portable digital music players, an industry association said Friday.
BUSINESS
Nov 26, 2005

Commission backs cutting tax breaks

While the government must slash its wasteful spending, taxes still need to be raised to support the aging society, the Tax Commission said Friday in its fiscal 2006 tax-reform proposals.
BASKETBALL
Nov 25, 2005

AND1 crew puts on good show in Tokyo

Known better as a hallowed sumo venue, Tokyo's Ryoguku Kokugikan transformed into a hoops hotbed on Nov. 13.
EDITORIALS
Nov 25, 2005

Press on with territories issue

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Tokyo this week for the first time in five years for a summit meeting with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. They and their ministers signed 12 documents, ranging from joint efforts to counter international terrorism to economic cooperation, including a Russian...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 25, 2005

Can you keep up with Autechre?

It's pretty much a character-defining kind of thing: Either you think the seminal U.K. electronic act Autechre are taking the ball and running with it to places you didn't know existed, or you're convinced that they've gone bleak, technical and chaotic, and you just want them to write some damn melodies...
BUSINESS
Nov 25, 2005

Megabanks show signs of revival

The nation's three giant banking groups posted drastic gains in the first half of fiscal 2005 after unloading many of the bad loans that undermined their strength and threatened the financial system for more than a decade.
BUSINESS
Nov 25, 2005

EBC frets corporate law amendment

The European Business Council in Japan issued an annual white paper on the nation's business environment Thursday that recommends changing an article in the revised corporation law it fears could make the structure of some European companies here illegal.
BUSINESS
Nov 25, 2005

GameCube fall halves Nintendo profit

Nintendo Co. said Thursday its group operating profit for the six months to Sept. 30 dived 51.0 percent on smaller sales of its GameCube video console and ballooning development costs for its next-generation Revolution console.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / THE SECOND ROOM
Nov 25, 2005

Psychedelic radar 11.25

Saturday, Nov. 26
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Nov 23, 2005

Big Money warms to socially responsible investing

Environmentalists have been preaching for decades that true societal change will only happen when the really big-money players, such as multinational corporations and banks, begin to balance profit-making with social responsibility.
BUSINESS
Nov 23, 2005

Major insurers profit thanks to fewer disasters

The nation's six major nonlife insurers reported higher first-half net profits from a year ago thanks to a decline in natural disasters, according to parent-only earnings reports released Tuesday.
JAPAN
Nov 22, 2005

Council seeks huge cuts in welfare, civil service, U.N. outlays

A Finance Ministry panel on Monday urged drastic cuts in social security, local government financing and civil servant payrolls in the fiscal 2006 budget to shore up the nation's debt-laden finances.
JAPAN
Nov 22, 2005

Kyushu student summit looks at hurdles to tourism, cures

BEPPU, Oita Pref. -- Some 460 students interested in travel and the tourism industry from around the world gathered this month in this hot-spring resort town in southeastern Kyushu to discuss the sector's untapped potential.
BUSINESS
Nov 22, 2005

MFG sees sharp rise in net profit

Mizuho Financial Group Inc., the country's second-largest banking group by assets, said Monday its group net profit for the first half of fiscal 2005 through September rose 44.7 percent from a year earlier, as the economic recovery boosted the financial health of its corporate borrowers.
BUSINESS
Nov 22, 2005

23 Toyotas for China motor show

Toyota Motor Corp. said Monday it will display 23 concept and production vehicles at a Chinese motor exhibition to be held in Guangzhou for a week beginning Tuesday.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 22, 2005

The 'IC you' card

People are still reeling from September's LDP landslide election, realizing that Koizumi can essentially legislate whatever he wants.
EDITORIALS
Nov 21, 2005

Tax diversion poses challenges

This fiscal year the government is expected to collect about 5.78 trillion yen in revenues from six different taxes paid by automobile and road users. Because these revenues are legally earmarked for road improvement, however, the government cannot use the money for other purposes. This rigidity has...
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Nov 21, 2005

Tweedle-George, tweedle-Jun and their futures in Wonderland

In Alice's world through the looking glass, Tweedledum has "Dum" embroidered on his collar and Tweedledee has "Dee" embroidered likewise. Alice assumes they both have "Tweedle" written on the backs of their collars as well. In our world of 2005, "Dum" would read "George W." and "Dee" would be "Junichiro,"...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Nov 21, 2005

China far way from becoming global technology powerhouse

China has come a long way to show "pockets of excellence" in some fields of science and technology, but it still has a long way to go before it can become a full-blown innovative power, a China expert at a U.S. think tank told a recent symposium in Tokyo.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 20, 2005

The good, the bad and the cliched

A RABBIT'S EYES by Kenjiro Haitani. Vertical, 2005, 288 pp., $14.95 (paper). On first publication, the mellow and delightful 1974 novel "A Rabbit's Eyes," out now in English for the first time, brought Kenjiro Haitani a great deal of fame and a wide following.

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