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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / CLOSE-UP
May 4, 2003

Alice Walker: Love makes her world go round

Alice Walker is best known as the author of "The Color Purple," her 1983 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the lives of African-American women in the Deep South early in the 20th century -- which Steven Spielberg made into a film in 1985 starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 4, 2003

Let's fight

It's early afternoon on a hot spring Sunday in Tokyo, and in the tranquil neighborhood park of Kodaira a fight is shaping up. Children still hurtle round the playground in one corner of the park, but at the far end, three men, burly and imposing, circle menacingly round a fourth. A crowd has gathered...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 4, 2003

Guns and poses from the past

An expectant hush descends as the line of 20 armor-clad samurai, their clan banners flapping in the stiff breeze, take up position in the clearing. With skilled precision they load their matchlocks and, on a given command, raise them and fire. The sound reverberates around the surrounding hills as the...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 4, 2003

Still howling with emotion

HOWLING AT THE MOON: Poems and Prose of Hagiwara Sakutaro, translation and introduction by Hiroaki Sato. Kobenhavn & Los Angeles, Green Integer, 2002, 316 pp., $11.95, (paper) Hagiwara Sakutaro is one of Japan's most important, and most cherished poets. His first volume of poetry, "Howling at the Moon"...
EDITORIALS
May 3, 2003

Now that the fighting is over

U.S. President George W. Bush announced on Thursday the end of fighting in Iraq. Welcome though it is, Mr. Bush's pronouncement marks only the close of the first phase of the Iraqi conflict. Many would say the real work begins now. Winning the war in Iraq will be easy compared with winning the peace....
BUSINESS
May 3, 2003

SMBC eyes 40% stake in Mitsui Mutual Life

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. and Mitsui Mutual Life Insurance Co. are in final talks to make the insurer a joint-stock company by next April, with the bank taking a roughly 40 percent stake in it, officials at both companies said Friday.
COMMENTARY / World
May 3, 2003

Coping with American power

SINGAPORE -- The victory of the United States over the Saddam Hussein regime was hardly an unexpected outcome. What remains really uncertain now is how the U.S. will use its postwar clout to create and manage international and regional order. The U.S. approach will shape the stability of Asia.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
May 3, 2003

Minivehicle, truck makers hope to cash in on hybrid market

With the success of the Toyota Prius, a gasoline-electric hybrid compact that debuted in 1997, such models have become a major focus of an automotive industry eager to clear tougher environmental regulations and improve its image.
BUSINESS
May 3, 2003

Ruthless foreigners given bad-news role

Japan's regional banks are turning to a tried and true method of conveying bad news: asking a foreign third-party to do it for them.
COMMENTARY
May 3, 2003

War leaves Britons divided

LONDON -- For the first time that I can remember, the prevailing political mood in Britain is one of vindication and vindictiveness. Almost everybody who took sides over the war in Iraq now feels they are right, and wants the other side to bow down and acknowledge it.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
May 3, 2003

Shinkansen: shared stink, flying fruit

This is a followup to an article I wrote a few weeks ago on how to ride the shinkansen. As many readers pointed out, I overlooked some very important aspects.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
May 3, 2003

Tit for tat in the game of Japanese gift-giving

"Beware of Japanese bearing gifts!"
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2003

Hong Kong's blurred sense of identity had a role in SARS fiasco

HONG KNG -- In the end, it took the Chinese Communist Party's nine-member Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) 5 1/2 months to take a public stand on handling the current atypical pneumonia crisis with much greater openness. Guangdong Province experienced the first outbreak of the previously unknown disease...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
May 2, 2003

Van Nistelrooy should be Premiership's main man

LONDON -- In the autumn of 1998 a few English journalists were in Holland and had dinner with Sir Bobby Robson, who had recently taken over at PSV Eindhoven.
EDITORIALS
May 2, 2003

Reviewing Mr. Koizumi's record

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, now just one week into his third year in office, sounds as upbeat as he did when he took office two years ago, even as the gulf between his words and deeds continues to widen. He says he is still firmly committed to his banner slogan: "structural reform with no sacred...
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2003

U.S. sets the bar high in N. Korea talks

SEOUL -- The United States and North Korea finally have begun talking again. Or have they? Are they talking to each other, at each other or past each other? Although the two sides agreed to keep the diplomatic channels open, it's going to take a lot more meetings to get out of this crisis in one piece....
Japan Times
BUSINESS
May 2, 2003

Economic woes weigh on Fukui

The fragile economy makes worrying almost an official job responsibility for the governor of the Bank of Japan. Looking back on six weeks at the helm of the central bank, Gov. Toshihiko Fukui even worried about worrying.
BUSINESS
May 2, 2003

Millea forced to downgrade fiscal 2002 profit forecast

Millea Holdings Inc., which groups Tokio Marine & Fire Insurance Co. and Nichido Fire & Marine Insurance Co., said Thursday it has revised downward its group profit forecast for fiscal 2002.
BUSINESS
May 1, 2003

BOJ promises to keep economy flush

The Bank of Japan on Wednesday said it would force-feed the economy with money as needed, in a bid to wipe out even hints of a collapse in the financial system.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
May 1, 2003

Flailing Japanese companies, government turn to U.S. recovery 'guru'

Japan, still struggling to find a way out of its bad-loan quagmire, is looking for salvation from a "guru" credited with turning around whole sectors of U.S. industry.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
May 1, 2003

Radioactive fallout courtesy of U.S.

In 1789, a German chemist, Martin Heinrich Klaproth, announced that he had discovered a new element in the dull black mineral pitchblende. He named it after the planet Uranus, itself discovered only eight years earlier.
COMMENTARY / World
May 1, 2003

Kelly's 'fairies' threaten peace

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Last October, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly set off an international crisis by claiming that North Korean officials had told him that Pyongyang was developing nuclear weapons. The officials denied saying that.
LIFE / Digital / NETWISE
May 1, 2003

New Wi-Fi accessibility unleashes the Internet

After enjoying the speed and always-on convenience of broadband Internet for about a year, I was surprised one afternoon to feel an odd pang of disconnectedness when staying at a friend's cottage in Izu. With nary a phone line or fiber-optic cable for miles around, I briefly found myself wishing my friend...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
May 1, 2003

Hanami with a shot of history

Vancouver, Canada, is a beautiful city. Not only for the magnificent mountains, for salmon spawning rivers, and a largely natural coast, but for the city's many trees. I am told that Vancouver has 124,000 street trees, 30,000 of which flower. The cherry trees especially are glorious.
EDITORIALS
May 1, 2003

Privacy bills still have faults

The Diet debate on the government-proposed privacy legislation cleared a major hurdle last week as a Lower House special committee approved it with the support of the ruling parties. The controversial package, designed to protect personal information held by government offices and private companies,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
May 1, 2003

"The Eternity Code," "The Countess's Calamity"

"The Eternity Code," Eoin Colfer, Puffin Books; 2003; 329 pp. The 13-year-old, pint-size mastermind of every heist known to man -- or to fairy -- is back. And in the latest installment of the "Artemis Fowl" series, time is running out not for Artemis' poor adversaries, but for him. His father, rescued...
EDITORIALS
Apr 30, 2003

Uncertainties in the global economy

The global economy is on shaky grounds, reports the World Trade Organization in its most recent assessment of the international outlook. Uncertainty created by geopolitics and the effects of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, has reinforced vulnerabilities that result from imbalances in the...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 30, 2003

Siting windmills in parks irks environmentalists

Efforts to build environmentally friendly wind power plants in Japan have been causing a stir because the best locations for windmills are often national parks, where they could actually do harm to natural ecosystems.

Longform

Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.
The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers