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COMMENTARY / World
Mar 8, 2006

Trading knives for scissors

ROME -- On International Women's Day (March 8), when thoughts turn to equality between the sexes, Aminata's story is especially poignant. Back in 1998, she was captured while selling cake in Kabalah, Sierra Leone, and forced to join the rebels. Not only was she trained to fight and use a gun, she was...
JAPAN
Mar 4, 2006

Banned insecticides finding way to Japan's shores, air

Highly toxic insecticides that are banned in Japan and under a global treaty have been detected in several parts of the country, the Environment Ministry said Friday.
OLYMPICS
Feb 23, 2006

Swiss skier Nef calls it quits

SESTRIERE, Italy (AP) Decorated Swiss ski veteran Sonja Nef announced Tuesday that she is retiring from competition after 12 seasons on the World Cup circuit because of poor health. Nef, 33, last raced in January and wasn't on the Swiss Olympic team. She intended to quit at the end of the World Cup...
JAPAN
Feb 16, 2006

Medical-fee changes target the elderly, infants

A government panel Wednesday announced new medical service fees aimed at encouraging home care over hospitalization of the elderly and giving priority to pediatric services.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 9, 2006

Indian 'New Deal' invokes bad, old idea

UBUD, Indonesia -- Recently Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a startling revelation: He pointed out that the urban-rural gap has widened over the past 50 years. By itself, this was neither a remarkable nor surprising conclusion. After all, with the poverty rate for India at about 26 percent...
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Feb 6, 2006

To improve Japan's finances, reform drive must stay alive

In fiscal 2006, the government will issue under 30 trillion yen in bonds for the first time in eight years, leaving the nation 11.2 trillion yen short of achieving a primary balance -- the condition where expenditures, excluding interest payments and debt redemptions, are covered by revenues excluding...
BUSINESS
Feb 2, 2006

Full-time workers up 0.5% in '05

The number of full-time workers rose 0.5 percent in 2005 from the previous year to 32.18 million for the first increase in eight years, the government said Wednesday.
JAPAN
Jan 31, 2006

Japan failed to fully inspect U.S. meat processing plants

Japan did not keep its promise to send officials to check U.S. meatpacking plants before resuming U.S. beef imports in December, farm minister Shoichi Nakagawa admitted Monday.
JAPAN
Jan 27, 2006

Workers removed from families may get more holidays

The labor ministry plans to propose that employers let workers living away from their families take time off for birthdays and anniversaries related to their children and spouses, sources said Thursday.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 24, 2006

Ending a barbarity against black bears

BRUSSELS -- Last month the cruel practice of farming Asiatic black bears for their bile was put firmly on the global agenda as 377 members of the European Parliament -- more than half the EP membership -- signed a written declaration calling on China to ban this barbarity. With bear bile already illegal...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 24, 2006

Can Japan absorb foreign influx?

When discussing the recent ethnic riots in France, The Economist newsmagazine ("Minority Reports," Nov. 10, 2005) posed an important question: How come some countries assimilate immigrants more peacefully than others?
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
Jan 15, 2006

Full of the fittest intentions

I nervously typed the numbers onto the Web site -- first my height, then my weight. I held my breath and clicked "Calculate."
JAPAN
Jan 14, 2006

No-cost childbirth mulled to boost population

The government will consider introducing a system to bear all direct costs for childbirth -- including hospitalization for mothers -- in a bid to encourage young couples to have more kids, a government minister said Friday.
JAPAN
Jan 13, 2006

Bird flu confab faces global pandemic fear

International talks jointly hosted by Japan and the World Health Organization opened Thursday in Tokyo to discuss how to contain a possible global pandemic sparked by the spread of bird flu among humans.
BUSINESS
Jan 12, 2006

Okamoto debuts spermicide condoms

Top condom maker Okamoto Industries Inc. announced Wednesday it will start selling the country's first spermicide-coated condom Feb. 1, hoping to stimulate the flagging domestic prophylactics market.
JAPAN
Jan 12, 2006

Importer of 'illegal' drug faces sanction

The health ministry will file a criminal complaint against a Tokyo-based importer for allegedly selling a chemical whose effect is similar to that of illegal drugs, ministry officials said Wednesday.
JAPAN
Jan 4, 2006

National cancer database in works

The health ministry is preparing a national database of registered cancer patients that will include their treatments and posttreatment condition in a bid to fight cancer, the No. 1 killer in Japan, according to ministry sources.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jan 3, 2006

Landlords, car repairs, and city hall

Landlord Five years ago my landlord asked for access to our apartment in order to fix a water problem in another premises directly under ours. Damage done to this apartment during that work still has not been repaired. Recently we had a problem with our electrical system and the electrician discovered...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 31, 2005

Is hiking taxes the solution to Japan's fiscal mess?

The nation has no choice but to make salaried workers pay more taxes to put its finances in order.
EDITORIALS
Dec 30, 2005

Carrying on with fewer people

Japan's population started shrinking this year, according to two separate reports by the Health, Welfare and Labor Ministry and the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry. The shrinkage began one year earlier than the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research had projected....
JAPAN
Dec 28, 2005

It's official: Flu season has arrived six weeks early

Flu season has arrived -- six weeks earlier than last winter and its second-earliest onset in the past decade, the health ministry announced Tuesday.
JAPAN
Dec 28, 2005

Japan's population declines by 19,000

The total population of Japan, including everyone who has been a resident longer than three months, fell to 127.76 million as of Oct. 1 for the first drop in the postwar period, the government said Tuesday.
COMMENTARY
Dec 23, 2005

Britain's new political setup

LONDON -- Just as commentators have been writing about a fundamentally new political "setup" in Japan, following Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's overwhelming election victory, so also the same language is being used about British politics.
JAPAN
Dec 23, 2005

Population already contracting

Japan's population has started shrinking for the first time this year, health ministry data showed Thursday, presenting the government with pressing challenges on the social and economic front, including ensuring provision of social security services and securing the labor force.
BUSINESS
Dec 22, 2005

Panel to let firms skip white-collar overtime

Companies would have the freedom to avoid paying overtime wages to high-ranking white-collar workers under a recommendation by a study panel at the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.

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