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BUSINESS
Aug 27, 2003

IRCJ plans to aid Mitsui Mining Co.

The Industrial Revitalization Corp. of Japan plans to assist Mitsui Mining Co. under its rescue program, sources said Tuesday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Aug 27, 2003

Tabaimo pulls ahead of 'fun art' pack

Although she has only recently turned 28, I am starting to think Tabaimo is one of Japan's most important artists. Here's why.
BUSINESS
Aug 27, 2003

Elpida Memory to create semiconductor subsidiary

Elpida Memory Inc., the sole domestic supplier of dynamic random access memory chips, said Tuesday it will establish a wholly owned semiconductor manufacturing subsidiary Sept. 1.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 27, 2003

Meiji Life, Yasuda to hire 10,000 before merger

Meiji Life Insurance Co. and Yasuda Mutual Life Insurance Co. will hire 10,000 sales representatives by the end of this year to bring their combined marketing force to 45,000 before they merge in January, Meiji Life Insurance President Ryotaro Kaneko said Tuesday.
COMMENTARY
Aug 26, 2003

Fujimori case testing Japan

The Japanese government is facing mounting pressure from the Peruvian government for the extradition of former President Alberto Fujimori, who has been in exile in Japan since November 2000. Last March, Interpol issued an arrest warrant for the disgraced former leader and late last month, the Peruvian...
BUSINESS
Aug 26, 2003

Sankyo sues drug firms over copycat packaging

Sankyo Co. filed a lawsuit Monday against five pharmaceutical companies, demanding they halt sales of generic drugs whose packaging is similar to that of its cholesterol-lowering drug.
EDITORIALS
Aug 26, 2003

Promise seen in stock rebound

With the Nikkei stock average climbing past 10,000 points for the first time in more than a year, it seems that some of the pessimism about the Japanese economy has disappeared. The index has followed an upward trend since April when it tumbled to the 7,600 level, the lowest since the bubble burst in...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Aug 26, 2003

Publishing, futons and more motors

Budding author Z. has written a book he thinks is ready for publication. "Can you give me guidance or advice as to how to go about getting published?"
SUMO
Aug 26, 2003

Kaio keeps top spot on east ozeki roost

Kaio, winner of the Nagoya tournament, maintains the top east ozeki position for the second straight time, while yokozuna Asashoryu keeps the top east slot for the third tournament in the Japan Sumo Association's rankings for the upcoming Autumn Grand Sumo Tournament released Monday.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 26, 2003

Life imitates art for gaijin charmers

We had a fantastic response to our "Charisma Man" competition in last week's Community Page.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 26, 2003

Japan will not ban visits by North Korean ships

The government does not plan to introduce a law banning North Korean ships from entering Japanese ports, government officials said Monday as the North Korean ferry Mangyongbong-92 docked in Niigata.
COMMENTARY
Aug 25, 2003

Japan's global security role

The most important feature of Japan's latest white paper on defense is that it gives new direction to the nation's defense policy. First, the report emphasizes that developing a missile defense system is a "matter of urgent importance for defense policy."
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 25, 2003

New Zealand struggles to stay nuclear-free

MADRAS, India -- One of the first things that strikes a visitor to New Zealand are the innumerable signboards that proudly proclaim the small Pacific island country to be nuclear-free. Even the common man on the streets of Wellington or Christchurch or Auckland will tell you New Zealand fiercely protects...
BUSINESS
Aug 25, 2003

Tokyo grave plots hot commodities

Tokyo's most famous cemetery solidified its to-die-for reputation when a rare public sale of burial plots attracted more than 40 applicants for every available space despite prices topping 10 million yen.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Aug 25, 2003

Humanity takes a bite out of Mother Earth

SUNSET BEACH, North Carolina -- Sunset Beach is a summer resort town that appears to have achieved its full-blown status only about a dozen years or so ago, just about the time we started spending our two-week vacation in the beach house of our poet friend Grace Gibson. Photos taken when she built the...
EDITORIALS
Aug 25, 2003

In plainer language, please

Over the past two weeks, a new type of computer virus known as Blaster and its variants have attacked hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide, including in Japan. These viruses are different from those previously discovered. They expand rapidly across the Internet without any human intervention,...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 25, 2003

Encouraging signs from the Chinese world

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- If one focuses on the totality of the Chinese world, there have been several positive signs recently. With international media attention generally fragmented, it perhaps would be worthwhile to try to compile a synthesis of what we have witnessed lately.
BASEBALL / MLB
Aug 25, 2003

Tuffy cracks 42nd as Buffs blank 'Wave

Tuffy Rhodes belted his 42nd homer of the year and three Kintetsu hurlers shut out Orix at Osaka Dome on Sunday as the Buffaloes downed the BlueWave 3-0 to win their third straight game.
COMMUNITY
Aug 24, 2003

The curious afterlife of Ada Lovelace

Celebrity is a fickle thing, as Ada Lovelace's famous father, the poet Lord Byron, learned to his cost -- sexual scandals and seesawing public opinion drove him into exile and to his death. For his daughter, however, the ups and downs of fame have mostly been posthumous.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Aug 24, 2003

The incredible remixing man

A good remix uncovers an element of the song that was already there so the listener perceives it in a whole new way. A bad remix often ends up as a vehicle for someone else's ego, with the original becoming so contorted and manipulated that it is unrecognizable in the final product.
EDITORIALS
Aug 24, 2003

Revisiting the Enola Gay

Fifty-eight years ago this month, a U.S. aircrew dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima from a lumbering B-29 that had been nicknamed Enola Gay in honor of the pilot's mother. Eight years ago, the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington mounted an exhibit of the...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 24, 2003

Slowly does it

Great works of art take time.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 24, 2003

Voices from the past help explain the present

SERVING OUR COUNTRY: Japanese American Women in the Military during World War II, by Brenda L. Moore. Rutgers University Press, 2003, $60 (cloth), $22 (paper). Building on her previous studies of racial issues, gender issues and military sociology, Brenda L. Moore has analyzed and documented an unusual...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 24, 2003

Is anyone out there looking?

In streets and parks, at schools, airports or shopping centers, you won't go far in Japan these days without encountering artworks in some shape or form, from monumental sculptures to decorative tiles underfoot -- or even simply children's drawings on display.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Aug 24, 2003

Samurais are in a league of their own

With the launch of the Top League (the new professional league for rugby union in Japan) just three weeks away and the World Cup due to start on Oct. 10, it is easy to forget that there are in fact two codes of rugby.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 24, 2003

Should Japanese history be rewritten?

HARING THE BURDEN OF THE PAST: Legacies of War in Europe, America and Asia, edited by Andrew Horvat and Gebhard Hielscher. Tokyo: The Asia Foundation & Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2003, 341 pp., 1,000 yen (paper). The legacies of war continue to dog Japan and are divisive at home and in Asia. Despite the...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 24, 2003

Keeping abreast of the boob tube's favorite idols

Can we talk about breasts? Specifically, the large kind, which in the United States are affectionately (or not) called "knockers" or "hooters." In Japan, the slang is more clinical : kyonyu (giant breasts), honyu (rich breasts), and even bakunyu (explosive breasts). These words are clinical because nyu...
COMMENTARY
Aug 24, 2003

Looking for a few bad men

LONDON -- Will Prime Minister Tony Blair's government fall as a result of the inquiry being led by Lord Hutton into the apparent suicide of weapons expert Dr. David Kelly? Unlikely.
COMMENTARY
Aug 23, 2003

Pawns for Tokyo's hardliners

Japan seems bound forever to want to embark on quixotic foreign-policy campaigns. Yesterday it was Tokyo's bizarre Northern Territories demands against Moscow. Today it is its equally bizarre abductee demands against Pyongyang.

Longform

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.
A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo