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COMMENTARY / World
Jul 26, 2004

Flawed homeland security

LAS VEGAS -- The dispute between Washington and Tokyo over the fate of Army Sgt. Charles Jenkins, whom the United States accuses of defecting to North Korea some 40 years ago, is more than a case of American legalism vs. Japanese ad hoc policy and humanitarian instincts. The issue goes much deeper into...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 25, 2004

DPRK diplomacy or brinkmanship?

TARGET NORTH KOREA: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, by Gavan McCormack. New York: Nation Books, 228 pp., 2004, $13.95 (paper). Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's gamble on a trip to Pyongyang seems to have paid off, giving him a boost in the polls, reuniting some of...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 18, 2004

Stigma, lack of funds hamper AIDS fight

MADRAS, India -- With still no vaccine or cure two decades after the first cases of the disease were reported/detected, AIDS is undoubtedly a terrible threat facing mankind.
JAPAN
Jul 17, 2004

Iranian's bust cited in sting justification

The Supreme Court has disclosed for the first time the conditions under which police can conduct sting operations, although scholars say these maneuvers should be outlawed because they actually cause a crime to occur.
JAPAN
Jul 15, 2004

Struggling UFJ pursues merger deal with MTFG

Ailing UFJ Holdings Inc. on Wednesday asked rival Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group Inc. to merge with it in a deal that would create the world's biggest banking group, with 190 trillion yen in assets.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 13, 2004

The big squeeze

The news from Japan these days is untypically sunny. The economy is performing at its sharpest clip for 13 years, investment and profits are up and analysts are gingerly forecasting a sustained recovery.
JAPAN
Jul 13, 2004

Constitutional revisionists see gain

Diet forces vowing to keep the Constitution intact lost further ground in the House of Councilors election, as the Japanese Communist Party suffered a major setback and the tiny Social Democratic Party barely hung on, according to final results released Monday.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 12, 2004

Moderate Islam's voice must be heard

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- The fact that every day a new "armchair" terrorism expert appears can be viewed as a welcome sign, for it shows that there is growing alertness to the new challenge of our times. Terrorism experts continue to argue over the best ways to confront unimaginable threats, but frequently...
JAPAN
Jul 10, 2004

The whys and wherefores of House of Councilors elections

Following a rocky Diet session, Sunday's House of Councilors election represents a de facto litmus test that will measure public support for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
EDITORIALS
Jul 4, 2004

The long and short of it

Here is another stereotype to discard: The world's tallest people are not Polynesian or Tutsi or even American. They are Dutch. Those lowlanders claimed the height title in 1999 and have kept it ever since, with the average Dutch male now topping the charts at a head-turning 185.4 cm.
COMMENTARY
Jun 24, 2004

Constitution faces hard sell

LONDON -- So the great battle of the new European Constitution is over -- at least for the moment. The leaders of 25 member-states of the European Union have agreed and signed up to a massive document, entitled a Constitution, which for the first time gives the EU a legal personality and an authority...
BUSINESS
Jun 23, 2004

Tokyo may retain stake in privatized mail service

The government is considering retaining equity stakes in postal services even after they are privatized, government sources said Tuesday.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jun 22, 2004

Visa cards, pensions and thesaurus info

Visa card Is it possible to get a zero annual fee Visa or Mastercard from a Japanese bank? It is quite common in the U.S., but I have never heard of or seen one here.
Japan Times
Features
Jun 20, 2004

Japan's war machine that isn't

In March 1999, when P-3C Orion aircraft from the Maritime Self-Defense Force dropped warning bombs near two suspicious trawlers in the Sea of Japan, it was the first time weapons had been used "in anger" by any SDF unit. The action followed the MSDF receiving its first-ever Cabinet order permitting it...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 15, 2004

Casualty of war

"I do understand why that girl could do such a brutal thing, because I myself treated people cruelly during World War II, without any hesitation," says 82-year-old Masaichi Nishiguchi, a former military policeman (MP) in the Japanese Army.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 6, 2004

Move your butt and your mind will follow

Nic Offer and John Pugh, the vocalist and drummer of the New York dance-punk band who go by the moniker !!!, are on a mission to liberate butts everywhere, but right now they're hungry. It's a sunny spring day and they're sitting in an Ebisu bar and promoting their debut album, "Louden Up Now."
BUSINESS
Jun 5, 2004

Cabinet ministers lay into MMC over coverups

Cabinet ministers launched scathing attacks Friday on Mitsubishi Motors Corp., which has already been the focus of public wrath over a series of vehicle defect coverups.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 1, 2004

'No sex please, you're teachers'

"I feel offended that anyone would tell me who I can or can't hang out with," says Brendan (not his real name), one of 6,000 foreign language instructors employed by Nova Corp. in Japan.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
May 31, 2004

The buck for abuse once stopped at the top

NEW YORK -- One of the early explanations proffered for "Iraq prison abuse" was the U.S. military's failure to foresee the large numbers of Iraqis they would round up. This explanation (included in the May 9 New York Times article "In Abuse, a Picture of G.I.'s Ill Prepared and Overwhelmed") lost credibility...
EDITORIALS
May 30, 2004

Unsung heroism

The Abu Ghraib prison scandal, still far from over, has prompted a lot of reflection and a fair degree of consensus in the United States. Some, like U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, may quibble over whether the treatment meted out to Iraqi prisoners constituted "abuse" rather than "torture,"...
COMMENTARY / World
May 24, 2004

On the move after decades of pacifism

A quiet pride is evinced in the dispatch of Japan's Self-Defense Forces troops for peacekeeping in Iraq even though the polls say a bare majority opposes the deployment. Says a business executive: "That's their profession; that's what they've been trained for."
JAPAN
May 22, 2004

Police raid retired teacher who raised flag, anthem ruckus

Police on Friday raided the house of a former Tokyo high school teacher who distributed copies of a magazine story at a school commencement ceremony dealing with the controversy over the Hinomaru flag and "Kimigayo" anthem.
COMMENTARY / World
May 22, 2004

AIDS: China's titanic threat

NEW YORK -- The recent warning by the Chinese government that HIV/AIDS is spreading rapidly in the country and that new and urgent measures are needed to combat the infection marks an important step in the fight against HIV/AIDS. This is particularly remarkable because, at the beginning of the epidemic,...
LIFE / Lifestyle / MATTER OF COURSE
May 20, 2004

Schools sounding false alarms over child safety

A few weeks ago my younger son came home from school all excited. "Mom! Guess what?" he shouted from the entranceway as he kicked off his shoes. "The ku gave us a gohan buza!" I had been hard at work on an article and was a little slow making the transition to his eclectic mix of languages. Why would...
JAPAN
May 17, 2004

Japan may participate in U.N. force in Iraq: Ishiba

Defense Agency Director General Shigeru Ishiba indicated Sunday that Japanese troops may participate in a U.N. multinational force in Iraq under a new U.N. resolution.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 7, 2004

Ozawa suggests DPJ chief Kan should quit over pension scandal

Ichiro Ozawa, deputy president of the Democratic Party of Japan, suggested Thursday that DPJ chief Naoto Kan should resign because he failed to pay the mandatory premiums for the basic pension system while serving as health minister in 1996.
JAPAN
May 2, 2004

DPJ reveals Constitution proposals

The Democratic Party of Japan has decided to include the phrases "exercising the right of self-defense" and "maintaining the Self-Defense Forces" in an interim report on constitutional reform scheduled to be compiled this month, party sources said Saturday.

Longform

Rock group The Yellow Monkey played K-Arena Yokohama in June as part of a nationwide tour. Concerts are increasingly popular in the age of social media as users value in-person experiences.
Inside Japan’s arena boom: Sports, sound and city-building