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JAPAN
Apr 13, 2003

4.9 magnitude quake hits Kagoshima

An earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 4.9 jolted Kagoshima Prefecture and surrounding areas on Saturday afternoon, the Meteorological Agency said.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / JAZZNICITY
Apr 13, 2003

Extracurricular cool at Hitorizawa

Hitorizawa High School in Kanagawa appears to be a normal Japanese high school. Plentiful shoe-boxes jam the entryway, a sign-in sheet for visitors dangles alongside the nub of an old pencil and lists of rules hang accusingly in the wide and somewhat dusty halls. After classes, administrative staff work...
JAPAN
Apr 13, 2003

Six months on, access to abductees remains an issue

OSAKA -- On Tuesday, six months will have passed since the five Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea in 1978 returned home, an event that most Japanese media rated the No. 1 news story of 2002.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 13, 2003

Making a stanza for life

HOW TO HAIKU: A Writer's Guide to Haiku and Related Forms, by Bruce Ross. Tuttle Publishing, 2002, 167 pp., 1800 yen (paper); TAKE A DEEP BREATH: The Haiku Way to Inner Peace, by Sylvia Forges-Ryan & Edward Ryan. Kodansha International, 2002, 129 pp., 1,800 yen (cloth); THE NICK OF TIME: Essays on Haiku...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 13, 2003

From polarization to U.N. reconstruction

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- A future historian will almost certainly view the current tragedy in Iraq more calmly than so many of today's analysts and commentators. As the drama is screened from sophisticated command rooms to the remotest television-equipped hut in a far corner of the world, emotions prevail...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 13, 2003

Black where they belong

Rewind to September 1986. Yasuhiro Nakasone, prime minister of a self-assured, economically powerful Japan, was taking swipes at American minorities -- especially African-Americans.
MORE SPORTS
Apr 13, 2003

SARS can't stop world of rugby's grand wake for fallen mates

Thursday, March 28, 2003, and noted Australian commentator Chris "Buddha" Hardy asks for quiet from the players and spectators gathered at the Hong Kong Football Club for its annual tens tournament.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 13, 2003

Laying the ghosts of doubt in Laos

LOST OVER LAOS, by Richard Pyle and Horst Faas. Da Capa Press, 2002, 239 pp., $30 (cloth) In American hands, the deadly serious business of warfare, the very way war is conducted, can seem at times more like an extension of its own pop culture, a cartoon warp of the real grotesqueries.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 13, 2003

Taking people as she finds them

Maki Tsuchie has been a television reporter and documentary film director in Okinawa for the past 10 years. Fully versed in the intricacies of U.S. and Japanese defense policy, she knows where the U.S. military stores depleted uranium and which U.S. troops in Okinawa have been sent to the Middle East....
JAPAN
Apr 13, 2003

DPJ to hold talks on Liberals merger

The Democratic Party of Japan will hold individual meetings this week with all of its rank-and-file lawmakers over a proposed merger with the Liberal Party, DPJ lawmakers said Saturday.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 13, 2003

Matsui, Matsui . . . and a little more Matsui

Because of coverage of the invasion of Iraq, it feels as if we're being spared the all-Matsui-all-the-time media blitz we were promised last fall when the former Yomiuri Giants slugger, Hideki Matsui, signed with the New York Yankees. We aren't. Matsui madness is everywhere, but because the war has engaged...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Apr 13, 2003

New heroines: women at work

The spring television season has arrived, and with it a new crop of dramas. Most of the leading characters are women, but whereas heroines once meant romance or family themes, this year the theme is work.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 13, 2003

Chinese deserve grown-up party leaders

SEOUL -- The leaders of the Chinese Communist Party want the world to believe that the government they control is fit to be accepted as a full-fledged mature member of the global community. But is it? There have to be some doubts.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 13, 2003

Who copped my hip-hop?

On a visit to Tokyo's trendy Shibuya Ward several years ago, I came across a Japanese teenager dressed from head to toe in baggy hip-hop wear, one of the first "B-Boys" I'd ever seen here. Still relatively new to Japan, I was curious about whether this young man represented some growing awareness of...
EDITORIALS
Apr 12, 2003

Bringing stability to Iraq

By all indications, the war in Iraq is about to end. Baghdad has fallen, with U.S. and British forces having seized key government buildings in the city. Surprisingly, they have met little organized resistance from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's loyal troops and militias. It comes as a great relief...
JAPAN
Apr 12, 2003

Town asked to store nuclear waste

Tokyo Electric Power Co. presented a plan Friday to Mayor Masashi Sugiyama of Mutsu, Aomori Prefecture, to build storage facilities there to hold up to 6,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, Tepco officials said.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 12, 2003

'Daiken' a discrimination snafu

The recent uproar over whether students at schools for Asian ethnic minorities should be granted equal access to national universities has highlighted the extent to which such institutions have been set apart within the nation's education system.
BUSINESS
Apr 12, 2003

IRC won't hire employees or retirees from bank sector

In an effort to maintain a neutral stance when choosing debt-ridden companies to rehabilitate, a new government-backed industrial revival body will not hire bank employees or retirees, officials said Friday.
BUSINESS
Apr 12, 2003

U.N. must seize the day in postwar Iraq: Shiokawa

The United Nations must act boldly and swiftly create a framework and environment to help rebuild war-ravaged Iraq, Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa said Friday.
JAPAN
Apr 12, 2003

Don't let up on Aum Shinrikyo: justice minister

Justice Minister Mayumi Moriyama on Friday underscored the need for continued surveillance of Aum Shinrikyo, the cult that carried out the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system and another deadly nerve gas attack the preceding year.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 12, 2003

Odaiba beach not even safe for sewer rats to dip in

It's Tokyo's premier beach -- a strip of wave-washed sand carefully constructed more than a decade ago in a multibillion yen project to give the sprawling capital an ultramodern waterfront.
JAPAN
Apr 12, 2003

Cloned beef may hit grocery stores later in the year

A health ministry report released Friday says that meat and milk of cows cloned from the somatic cells of adult animals are safe for human consumption.
BUSINESS
Apr 12, 2003

Employment offices doing their best to jam square pegs into round holes

Faced with near-record levels of unemployment in Japan, Hello Work employment offices are stepping up efforts to get young people onto a career path.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Apr 12, 2003

How to ride the shinkansen (and get off)

After 10 years in Japan, I still haven't figured out the bullet trains.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 12, 2003

Sizing up America after Iraq

SINGAPORE -- Three weeks into the war in Iraq, the main protagonists are already retooling their strategies for dealing with the United States. China, Russia, France, Germany, Britain, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and, lastly, North Korea (most likely the next target of American ire) have...

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